HOME | DD
Eurwentala β The Little Horse with a Big Nose
#fossil #horse #mammal #paleoart
Published: 2018-03-11 15:36:46 +0000 UTC; Views: 8372; Favourites: 342; Downloads: 0
Redirect to original
Description
I have a thing with fossil horses at the moment.Hippidion principale, the extinct South American equid with a remarkable nose. The bony anatomy of the snout was different from all other mammals I know, with retracted sides but a long, thin bony spike on the top. It's not technically a trunk, like the noses of saiga antelopes, mooses, or tapirs, but was perhaps functionally somewhat similar.
Hippidion was widely distributed in South America and only went extinct about 8000 years ago, after coexisting with people for a few millenia. It's so recent, ancient dna analyses have been made. It turns out Hippidion was the last representative of an old evolutionary branch outside all living equids. It's a shame it survived so late just to go extinct before modern times. There's some evidence that people hunted and ate these weird little horses.
Related content
Comments: 64
π: 0 β©: 1
π: 0 β©: 0
π: 0 β©: 0
I wonder why it went extinct if it could coexist with humans
π: 0 β©: 1
Coexisting with humans for a few thousand years does not mean that humans couldn't have rendered the species extinct in the end. It seems quite a few now-extinct megafaunal species did manage to survive with humans for a time, but something (perhaps human population growth, cultural changes, accumulating inbreeding, introduced species, or a change in climate) finally tipped them over the edge. Madagascar's elephant birds and giant lemurs seem to be another example, and the last Megaloceros on the Ural mountains. In Europe, the aurochs finally went extinct as late as in the 1600s, after 30 000 years of coexistence.
I'm not familiar with the subtleties of South American Holocene climate, but it seems there was also a period of unstable rainfalls around this time, which might have played a role. Personally, I highly doubt climate changes alone were responsible for most or any of Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions, since the species had already survived to many drastic climatic shifts with apparently little trouble. But as an additional stress to an already endangered population, it might have been important.
π: 0 β©: 2
π: 0 β©: 1
π: 0 β©: 0
It probably was a combination of many things
π: 0 β©: 0
This is a beautiful painting.
It's a shame there are no horses (no naturally evolved species, anyway) in South America in the present day.
π: 0 β©: 0
This guy and PliohippusΒ have competition...
I love this guy so much! My favorite recontruction of this animal!
π: 0 β©: 0
He could go on to become a great Muppet π
π: 0 β©: 0
A great work. I wonder if you are planning to made an Amerhippus too!
π: 0 β©: 1
Thanks! I'm actually working on a set of ALL extinct Late Pleistocene and Holocene equids. It's very interesting, but more than a bit frustrating since the taxonomy is such a mess. Do you have an informed opinion which Amerhippus species are actually valid? For now, I went for one plains taxon (lasallei/neogeus) and one mountain taxon (andium/insulatus).
π: 0 β©: 1
Hehe, Β I've seen some of them 
I think that your approach is good, with two morphotypes, one large and other smaller, although both are not mutually exclusive from mountain and plains zones... "E. lasallei" lived in a savanna in the middle of the Colombian Andes, and E. insulatus is recorded in a plain site, Mene de Inciarte in Venezuela.
π: 0 β©: 1
Thanks for the reply! I read Machado et al 2017, but was a bit doubtful about the validity of using just autopodial elements for species recognition. The book chapter I could not obtain. I'm guessing only full genomes could give the final answer (and it would no doubt be surprising!). Maybe I'll look up the skull of E. santaelenae and add it to the set, just to be sure.
About Hippidion/Onohippidion - along with the presence or absence of the fossa, another significant difference seems to be the position of the nasal bones, either high over the nose )as reconstructed here) or much lower. However, I'm fairly sure that's just taphonomy. It would be nice to know which was the position on life. It has really significant impact on what the animal looked like.
π: 0 β©: 1
I can send you the book if you need it, and would be awesome see also to E. santelenae.
By the way, even more Amerhippus!:Β
π: 0 β©: 1
Wow, I'd love to get to read it! I'll send you a message through the other channel.
That's a funny coincidence - I just coloured my Amerhippus (E. lasallei) a few days ago and ended up with an almost identical colour and striping. Great minds think alike, I guess.
π: 0 β©: 1
Now I'm even more curious by your version! Is nice to experiment with patterns of color and stripes and well, some coincidences will emerge. 
π: 0 β©: 0
I wouldn't eat horses, seeing how I like to ride em. But it's a shame that these ones were hunted into extinction. Along with Dusicyon Avus.
π: 0 β©: 1
Yeah. Along with caballoid horses, Macrauchenia, Cuvieronius, Toxodon, and many other South American wonders.
Eating animals considered friends feels wrong, but in a way, it's a lot more ethical. At least where I live, horses are not raised for meat, but are only occasionally eaten after living a decent life as riding or sports animals.
π: 0 β©: 1
Not to mention large herbivores are also essential to ecosystem services like seed dispersal.
π: 0 β©: 1
Yes! And keeping the landscape open. In Finland, we have a huge problem with conserving the flora and fauna that originally lived in Ice Age grasslands and then moved into traditional pasturelands. Now there's no wild big grazers and almost no traditionally kept livestock. The whole rural landscape has changed in a matter of decades, and thousands of species are endangered.
π: 0 β©: 2
This so much.
And the worst part is, nobody sees the problem because of shifting baseline syndrome
π: 0 β©: 1
Yes! I recently interviewed a fair number of Finnish conservation experts about the possibilities of rewilding, and was surprised to see just how sceptical they all were. Many said even trying out whether bison or horses in a fenced area is unnecessary, even though everyone agrees we have some 1800 endangered mammoth steppe species, most of which are going extinct with current management.
π: 0 β©: 1
When even the βexpertsβ are fooled by shifting baseline syndrome....sigh
π: 0 β©: 0
Yeah! And the only large herbivore left in Finland is the moose (although i think theyβre called elk in Europe). However, if I recall correctly caribou, muskoxen, aurochs, wisents, and wild horses all once lived on Scandanavian grasslands. All of these (with the exception of the aurochs, since itβs extinct) can be reintroduced.Β
π: 0 β©: 1
Well, if you count caribou (or reindeer), we do have those. And white-tailed deer imported from the US, and also red deer and a small amount of fallow deer. But those are all browsers thay don't really create grasslands like grazers do. That, and they are kept in reasonably small densities because they cause tons of traffic accidents and damage to commercial forestry.
Reintroduction of big grazers has been suggested, but the thing that makes it slightly more complicated is that we have zero actual evidence of any of those species in Finland. There are bone finds from Sweden, Denmark, and Estonia - so basically all around us - but not in Finland. It's of course more than likely some or all of those species did once live in this area, but it's hard to argue without any finds.
π: 0 β©: 1
Well Since weβre talking about Scandanavia in general, I guess itβs likely those species were found in Finland. Which fossils of the species I mentioned were found in Sweden and Denmark?Β
π: 0 β©: 1
Yep, quite likely they were. It makes it harder to argue that, though. Especially since the Swedish finds are generally from Southern Sweden: the part that is further south than any part of Finland. The closest megafaunal grazer bone locations on the same _latitudes_ as Finland are pretty far east in Siberia, with a lot drier climate. It could, theoretically, be argued that Finnish cold but rainy climate and/or thick coniferous forests were not and are not suitable for megafauna. Of course, it's more likely the bones have been simply destroyed by glaciations and our unusually acidic soil. However, those who are sceptical towards rewilding (which is apparently everyone, according to a set of interviews I did recently) can still easily argue there's no proof they are native fauna.
The only exception here is the woolly mammoth. Finland has about ten isolated mammoth bone findings. But the mammoth cannot be reintroduced, since it's extinct.
I think there were aurochs, wisent, and horses in Southern Sweden and at least horses in Estonia during the Holocene (probably the others too, I haven't looked into it). There still are musk oxen in Norway, though those have been introduced from North America. And pretty much the whole set of Ice Age megafauna is found in Denmark, but Denmark is geographically closer to countries like Germany than other Scandinavian countries, so that's no surprise.
Caribou - or reindeer - are present as two subspecies: the Finnish forest reindeer, and the mountain reindeer. Both are endangered, but the semi-domesticated form of mountain reindeer (you know, the sort that pulls Santa's sled) is absolutely everywhere in the northern regions, to the point of severe overgrazing in some areas.
π: 0 β©: 1
Have the domestic hybridized with the wild?
π: 0 β©: 1
Not for decades in Finland, at least. The wild mountain and forest reindeers were deliberately hunted to local extinction back at the time when reindeer husbandry was becoming an industry. Apparently, to make room. 
π: 0 β©: 0
Iβm now curious about what it tasted like
π: 0 β©: 2
Apparently so good people ate them all. I'd guess a combination of horse and moose (or other gamey forest ungulates).
π: 0 β©: 1
Never tried horse but moose is alright (mouth begins drawling)
π: 0 β©: 0
There were quite a lot of fascinating creatures that only died out quite recently (well, "recently" on a geological timescale).
π: 0 β©: 1
Agreed! I'm working on a set of (all?) extinct equids that lived late enough to meet modern humans.
π: 0 β©: 0
Now this is an example of "Hey fella! Why the long face?"
π: 0 β©: 0
Time to de-extinct. If we have genetic material...
π: 0 β©: 1
And sigh... yet another Anthropocene casualty
π: 0 β©: 1
There's a surprising number of equid casualties. I keep finding new Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene species. Though some of those might be synonymous, since their taxonomy is still messy.
π: 0 β©: 1
I sometimes wonder if some of these things are birth defects rather then a species.Β
π: 0 β©: 1
I'm sure it's entirely possible to mistake a birth defect for a new species. In this case, it doesn't seem likely, since there are three known species of Hipparion, and I think multiple skulls.
π: 0 β©: 1
True, there could be multiple examples of birth defects as well, hard to say. It`s whyΒ eereΒ on the side of caution with extinct animalsΒ Β
π: 0 β©: 1
Sure, but the same birth defect in every known individual of a species? That's not a defect, that's a feature. 
Hippidion did not only have a weird nose. It also had very distinct limb bones and teeth that were different from Equus horses. They, and oxygen isotope evidence, all point into a short-legged equid that browsed in forested of wetland environments. The big nose might be analogous to that of mooses or tapirs, who have similar diets. It really only differs by being supported by a bony rod on the top (which is a unique feature).
Another interesting point is that birth defects often come in recognizable shapes across species. Here's an example of fossil defects being identified through comparison with living ones: www.livescience.com/44334-woolβ¦
And here's another obvious example: a two-headed fossil reptile that died very soon after hatching. In addition to being an often-repeated defect, it can be identified as belonging to a previously-known species through being anatomically otherwise identical: news.nationalgeographic.com/neβ¦
π: 0 β©: 0
I didn't know horses were doing other things in their evolution than becoming as cursorial as possible. Nice!
π: 0 β©: 1
| Next =>