[The title
was written by my editor. Not accurate.]
The 47-million-year-old pregnant mare fossil reveals ancient horses
looked substantially different than the modern-day horses.
by John
Tyburski
Copyright © Daily
Digest News, KPR Media, LLC. All rights reserved.
The fossil
of a pregnant horse estimated to be almost 50 million years old probably took a
fateful drink from a freshwater lake that hid a deadly trap. Researchers
speculate that the mare and her unborn foal probably died from exposure to
poisonous volcanic gases. The ancient horse and her pitiful offspring provide
evidence that the reproductive systems of ancient horses were not all that
different from those of modern-day horses.
Researchers
found the specimen of Eurohippus messelensis in 2000 in the fossil-rich
Messel Pit site in Germany. The site has yielded well-preserved fossils dating
as far back as the Eocene Epoch, which researchers place at 57 million to 36
million years ago. Only in 2009 did Jens Lorenz Franzen of the Senckenberg
Research Institute, along with colleagues, examined the fossil with micro X-ray
to search for anatomical details.
It was
during this careful examination that the research team discovered the unborn
baby horse preserved within the fossilized mare. The X-ray examinations even
shed light on the microbiome in and around the unborn colt fetus. The results of their
study were presented last week at the 2014 annual meeting of the Society of
Vertebrate Paleontology in Berlin.
“The
bacteria helped a lot and in a very wonderful way,” Franzen said in a
statement. “Tips of hairs of the outer ears – even the interior, like blood
vessels, become visible in some cases.”
Two
important anatomical differences between the ancient mare and the horses of
today are that the ancient horse was much smaller and it had four toes on each
limb rather than a single hoof. Otherwise, the way in which the foal had been
developing suggests surprising similarities to modern horses.
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