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Hello, the ancestors of horses were as diverse as antelope are today, roaming in North America

for tens of millions of years until becoming

wholly extinct there. Some had crossed into Asia and Europe where they were hunted and faced

extinction there too, until humans learned to milk them and then ride them, changing the future of both species

immeasurably. One of our contributors has said the horse is one of the greatest technologies

that humans have ever harnessed. From that point humans have bred horses great and small while narrowing their genetic diversity.

And while we know more about horse genetics than any other animals,

we don't know why the modern horse was the one-hoof-toe, or just the one-hoof-toe or just luck.

We're made to discuss the evolution of horses are Alan Outram, Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Exeter.

Christine Janis, Honor of Professor in Paleobiology at the University of Bristol,

and Professor Emerita in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University, and John Hutchinson. and the earliest ancestors of the modern horse? Well, there were smallish kind of dog size, maybe around 10 kilogram animals back about 55 million

years ago or more in North America and they had four fingers on their front legs and

three toes on their back legs. These were animals like things called

Hiracotherium and Rina Hippus.

Already they had some features that we would call

horse-like, so their feet were somewhat elongate

and their limbs in general were adapted, mainly. were So they were on their way, you could say, to becoming horses, but still very, very different from modern horses.

...