EQUINE MISSING LINK

Hawera Star, Volume L, 7 February 1931, Page 16

EQUINE MISSING LINK

■pOJTBS of Plesippus, the very great- ** grandfather of the modern horse, have been discovered in Idaho, uhcre scientists have identified among skeletal remains the missing link of the horse family.

Plesippus bore slight resemblance to the winnex_of last year ’s Derby. He was a prehistoric horse about the size of a collie dog, and had three toes on each foot. While crossing a swamp, Plesippus got bogged in the mire and perished. The deposits that closed over his carcass preserved the fossil bones for more than a million years. But the modern horse’s link with the past can be observed without visiting a museum.

There are certain apparently useless structures connected with the legs of a horse, which give rise to many theories concerning his probable evolution from an animal of different type. There is on the inner surface of each foreleg of the horse, above the knee, and on the inner surface of each hind leg, below the hock joint, a callous, elongated piece of skin known as “chestnut,” which has long been a subject of investigation, based upon the idea that it represents the former existence of an appendage which has disappeared in the process of evolution. There is also a bony, wart-like structure, at the back of the fetlock or pastern joint, quite pronounced in some animals, which serves no useful purpose to the horse in his present, form. Practically all writers on the history of the horse who have given serious study to the subject incline to the belief that the wild horse of the steppes of Asia has the most legitimate claim as the sourse from which the domesticated horse was derived.

Scientists all agree that in prehistoric ages certain types of horses ranged over parts of Asia and of North America and South America, and that while the wild horses of Asia appear to have descended from the original stock, all such animals had disappeared from North and South America before any modern Europeans landed there.

Evolution of the Horse

Research efforts have been highly successful in establishing in the mind of scientists the multiple-toed skeleton remains of an ancient, animal as the progenitor of the horse which, during all recorded history, has been distinguished by a single toe encased in a wall of horn or hoof, the form best adapted to carrying heavy weight at speed over rough ground. The use of horse chariots prevailed in Egypt as far back as the history of that country nas been made known through monuments and ancient inscriptions.

Among the bas-reliefs and pictures of Assyrian, Persian, Nubian, Greek, Boman, Byzantine, and other horses of the ancients, the types are limited and bear slight resemblance to the modern breeds of horses as developed within the past two centuries.

The horses, as depicted in the fifht century 8.C., in the frieze of the Parthenon and numerous bas-reliefs of that period, bear much resemblance to the wild horse of Asia in size, the shape of the head and neck, the peculiar short, ujrstanding mane. The size is readily estimated in comparison with that of the riders, whose legs hang down far below the bodies of the horse.

The first modern horses to land on the American Continent wore brought I by Cortez, and participated in the con- ! quest of Mexico. Ferdinand do Soto brought horses to Florida and used them on his long march to the Mississippi. After his death and burial in the Father of .Waters, as that river was long known, his followers crossed over. The horses then taken to the region now known as Texas and abandoned there, together with those coming in from Mexico, were the progenitors of the bands of wild horses that gradually spread over the prairies and became known as mustangs. Had the country over which they roamed remained unoccupied by the American frontiersman nnd settler, the mustangs would eventually have vied in numbers with the buffalo, which roamed the prairies from Texas to Canada.