Evolution of the Horses Pack by Moondawg

Evolution of the Horse Pack by Moondawg - Combined

The horse belongs to an order known as the Perissodactyls, or "odd-toed ungulates", which all share hoofed feet and an odd number of toes on each foot.

Horses appeared to be absent from the Americas until the Spanish Conquistadors brought domestic horses from Europe in the 16th Century, and escaped horses quickly established large wild herds. The early naturalist Buffon suggested in the 1760s that this was an indication of inferiority of fauna in the New World, then later reconsidered this idea.

William Clark's 1807 expedition to Big Bone Lick found "leg and foot bones of the Horses" which were included with other fossils sent to Thomas Jefferson and evaluated by the anatomist Caspar Wistar, but neither commented on the significance of this find.

During the Beagle survey expedition the young naturalist Charles Darwin had remarkable success with fossil hunting in Patagonia. On 10 October 1833 at Santa Fe, Argentina, he was "filled with astonishment" when he found a horse's tooth in the same stratum as fossil

giant armadillos, and wondered if it might have been washed down from a later layer, but concluded that this was "not very probable". After the expedition returned in 1836 the anatomist Richard Owen confirmed that the tooth was from an extinct species which he subsequently named Equus curvidens, and remarked that "This evidence of the former existence of a genus, which, as regards South America, had become extinct, and has a second time been introduced into that Continent, is not one of the least interesting fruits of Mr. Darwin's palæontological discoveries."

In 1848 a study on the fossil horses of America by Joseph Leidy systematically examined Pleistocene horse fossils from various collections including that of the Academy of Natural Sciences and concluded that there hadbeen at least two ancient horse species in North America, Equus curvidens and another which he named Equus americanus, but a decade later he found that name had already been taken and renamed it Equus complicatus. In the same year he visited Europe and was introduced by Owen to Darwin.

Also included in this pack is the Hipparion and the Merychippus both files have been updated to work with ZT so you won't need DD or CC to use them.

This pack is a combined pack so if you already have Hipparion and Merychippus then the single files will nee to be removed from the update or dlupdate folder.

Updated 2010-11-03

Just to save space with less in zip and smaller image.

Nothing new.