Julie Haghlette, age 11, of Adel, Ia.., for her question:
What did the first horses look like?
The fossil bearing rocks of north america are littered with the remains of the ancestors of the noble horse. So we have plenty of evidence to show the gradual development of the horse's family tree. Many museum displays contain a series of fossil bones shaving the various stages of the long, long story of the horse.
The story of the horse and his family dates back some 50 million years. It is a story of a struggle and success, of triumph and disaster. When Columbus came to the new world, there were no horses here. So it came as a surprise when science learned that the entire horse family got its start and spent its early stages in North America.
We must go back, back in tune some 50 million years. North America is basking in a baby climate of hot summers and warm winters. The rockies have not grown their proud peaks, and the Gulf of Mexico reaches up into what is now Illinois. There are redwoods and magnolias, fig trees and dainty birches way up in alaska and there axe smiling alligators in the streams of North Dakota.
Our dusty prairie lands are park lands of tender vegetation. There are crystal lakes, shady forests and patches of soft, green grass. In the animal world, the furry mammals have rrplaced the dinosaurs. It is a dawn world, and here among the grassy meadows we find eohippus the dawn horse.
This remote ancestor of the great horse is no bigger than a fox but he is a graceful creature. He stands with a herd of friends and relatives, munching the tender grass es. At shoulder level, he is 11 inches high. He has the arched back and graceful neck which will be inherited by his distant descendants. He has a long, horsey tail and a graceful, flowing mane.
The herd is startled and the dawn horses take off at a trot. They do not run like modern horses, for they have not yet developed the hard hoofs which a horse needs to gallop. Eohippus has soft toes on his feet. He has four soft toes on each front foot and three on each of his hind feet. It will take his family almost 50 million years to develop the hard teeth, the huge size, the mighty muscles and hard hoofs of the modern horse.
In 50 million years, the shape of land and sea has changed many times. Several times, Alaska has reached out a hand and formed a land bridge between North America and Asia. Some of the horse ancestors trotted over to asia and settled there and scme roamed farther afield into Europe. We do not know what happened, but the original horses of north america perished, and the horse family survived only in the old world.