Horse history

The modern horse which is known as equus caballus, belongs to the family Equidae, which also includes zebras and asses. The Equidae are placed in the Perissodactyla which the rhinoceroses are also in. They have descended from the Condylarthra, a group of primitive, long extinct mammals which were the ancestors of all hoofed mammals. The evolution of the horse has been over a period of about 60 million years. The history of the horse starts with the Eohippus which is also called the Dawn Horse, which is known to have lived in North America about 54 to 38 million years ago. They were an animal no larger than a small dog; the Eohippus was designed to live in the forest. They had four toes on its fore feet and three on its back feet and they had pads similar to a dog.  They had small crowned teeth to eat leaves. Then about 37 to 26 million years ago started showing distinct changes: their legs became longer, the back straighter, and the whole body larger, one of the toes on the fore foot disappeared, and their teeth started to change. Then the environment started to change and this made their teeth change, it made their necks longer, and they also their single toe and hoof began to evolve. Then the horse family became more complex, the Equus is the genus of the modern horse finally emerged about a million years ago.