Eohippus

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Eohippus
Temporal range:
Ma
Reconstructed skeleton, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, United States
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Perissodactyla
Family: Equidae
Genus: †Eohippus
Marsh, 1876
Species:
†E. angustidens
Binomial name
†Eohippus angustidens
(Cope, 1875)
Synonyms
  • Eohippus validus
  • Hyracotherium angustidens
  • H. a. angustidens
  • H. a. etsagicum
  • H. vasacciense
  • H. v. vasacciense
  • H. cusptidatum
  • H. seekinsi
  • H. loevii
  • Orohippus angustidens
  • Orohippus cuspidatus
  • Orohippus vasacciensis
  • Lophiotherium vasacciense

Eohippus is an

equid ungulates.[1] The only species is E. angustidens, which was long considered a species of Hyracotherium. Its remains have been identified in North America and date to the Early Eocene (Ypresian stage).[2]

Discovery

Restoration by Charles Knight

In 1876,

paraphyletic group of species, and the genus now includes only H. leporinum. E. validus was found to be identical to an earlier-named species, Orohippus angustidens Cope, 1875,[3] and the resulting binomial
is thus Eohippus angustidens.

Description

Eohippus stood at about 30 cm (12 in), or 3 hands tall, at the shoulder.[4] It has 4 toes on its front feet and 3 toes on the hinds, each toe ending in a hoof. Its incisors, molars and premolars resemble modern Equus. However, a differentiating trait of Eohippus is its large canine teeth.[5] [4]

Stephen Jay Gould comments

In his 1991 essay, "The Case of the Creeping Fox Terrier Clone",[6] Stephen Jay Gould lamented the prevalence of a much-repeated phrase to indicate Eohippus size ("the size of a small Fox Terrier"), even though most readers would be quite unfamiliar with that breed of dog. He concluded that the phrase had its origin in a widely-distributed pamphlet by Henry Fairfield Osborn, and proposed that Osborn, a keen fox hunter, could have made a natural association between his horses and the dogs that accompanied them.[6]

See also

References

Wikispecies has information related to eohippus.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to eohippus.
  1. S2CID 19876380
    .
  2. doi:10.1046/j.1096-3642.2002.00005.x
    .
  3. ^ Cope, E.D. (1875). Systematic Catalogue of Vertebrata of the Eocene of New Mexico, collected in 1874. p. 22.
  4. ^ a b "Hyracotherium (Eohippus)". University of Guelph. Archived from the original on 2020-11-13.
  5. ^ "Eohippus | Size & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2022-09-27.
  6. ^
    ISBN 978-0-393-02961-1
    .
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eohippus&oldid=1214434018"