Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.
Finding the Eohippus.
The Wasatch formation, in the Bad Lands of Wyoming, in which lie skeletons of the Dawn Horse.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.
Eohippus, the Four-Toed Horse.
The Dawn Horse, the earliest horse so far known, size of a large fox, adapted to low-lying and wooded ground.
“Clear as the barrel of a six-shooter a foot from your nose,” agreed the cowboy.
“Now, Dick,” Perry went on, “the real thing was a good deal that way. When Nature first started to make a horse, it came out like a four-toed creature not much bigger than a fox. The rocks that Nature was making at that time, which we call Lower Eocene, we can liken to the pine shavings. So you see, wherever you find Lower Eocene rocks you’re likely to find skeletons of that little four-toed horse, just the same way as any place in that layer of pine shavings you’d be apt to find the horses whittled out of pine. We call that horse an Eohippus.”