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To: greenwolf
You've been sucked straight in. All of those fossil horses were running around at more or less the same time and there's no way to claim any one of them is older than or ancestral to any other.

You have made a very fanciful misinterpretation of a dialogue that happened in mainstream science starting about 130 years ago and ending with George Gaylord Simpson back in the 1940s. Horse evolution, like just about everything else, is a tree structure and not a straight-line progression. For all that, it is indeed a progression through time and lots of it.

Just for instance:

Eohippus/Hyracotherium, 50 million years ago.

Merychippus, 10 million years ago.

Just one tiny part of the picture is formed by the changes in the toe bones.

Figure 6. Stages in horse evolution showing the reduction in the number of toes and foot bones. Forefeet above, hind feet below. (A) Hyracotherium, a primitive early Eocene horse with four toes in front and three behind, (B) Miohippus, an Oligocene three-toed horse, (C) Merychippus, a late Miocene form with reduced lateral toes, and (D) Equus. (From Vertebrate Paleontology by Alfred Sherwood Romer published by The University of Chicago Press, copyright © 1945, 1966 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This material may be used and shared with the fair-use provisions of US copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires both the consent of the authors and the University of Chicago Press.)
From Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record.
111 posted on 01/27/2004 12:12:05 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: VadeRetro
Howdy! I was wondering if you could comment as to what came before Hyracotherium? I have been doing some reading and have yet to find anything that fills the 'gap'. Also, how was the connection between Hyracotherium and Mesohippus derived? The fact that one was found in earlier strata and they looked similar?
121 posted on 01/27/2004 12:48:05 PM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
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