Full Thread: Fossils
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Old December 18th, 2013 #23
Jae Manzel
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Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 1,066
Default New species of horse discovered from 4.4-million-year-old fossils



Researchers fossil hunting in northern Ethiopia have discovered a new species of extinct horse that lived in the region around 4.4 million years ago. This find not only fills in gaps in the evolution of the horse, but also provides another piece to the puzzle of our own distant ancestors that lived in the area at the time.

The new species, named Eurygnathohippus woldegabrieli, was discovered from fossil bones unearthed in the Afar Region of Ethiopia in 2001 and 2002. Roughly the size of a small zebra, E. woldegabrieli was found to have the three-toed hooves that were common to horse species at the time, however the leg and jawbone fossils showed a definite pattern of development in horse evolution. They had longer legs than those species that existed before 5 million years ago, which would have allowed them to cover more ground when looking for food and when fleeing predators. The teeth in the jawbone also revealed differences from those older species, since they were taller, and the teeth crowns were more worn-down from a diet of grazing on grasses.

"Grasses are like sandpaper," said Scott Simpson, a member of the research team from Case Western Reserve's School of Medicine, according to ScienceDaily. "They wear the teeth down and leave a characteristic signature of pits and scratches on the teeth so we can reliably reconstruct their ancient diets."

Compared to E. woldegabrieli, members of horse species that have been discovered from around 3.5 million years ago are taller and have longer noses, both showing how the horse continued to adapt to life in flat grasslands.

Another important aspect of this discovery is that these fossils were found near the famous Middle Awash archaeological site, which has the longest, continuous fossil record of human evolution in the world. Dating these fossils at around 4.4 million years ago puts E. woldegabrieli as being around at the same time as an ancient ancestor of ours, called Ardipithecus ramidus.

The evidence from the E. woldegabrieli fossils puts a better date on the age of the other fossils in the area, and shows what the local environment was like at the time. This can give scientists a better idea of what kind of conditions our forbears lived in, which can reveal more about our own evolution.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/geekq...212008025.html
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