Anchitherium
Name:
Anchitherium
(Near beast).
Phonetic: An-chee-fee-ree-um.
Named By: Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer -
1844.
Classification: Chordata, Mammalia,
Perissodactyla, Equidae, Anchitheriinae.
Species: A. ezquerrae
(type), A.
alberdiae, A. aurelianense, A. australis, A. castellanum,
A. clarencei, A. corcolense, A. cursor, A. gobiense,
A. hippoides, A. matritense, A. navasotae, A.
parequinum, A. procerum.
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: 60 centimetres high at the shoulder.
Known locations: Across Eurasia and North America,
but particularly well known from Europe and the USA.
Time period: Miocene.
Fossil representation: Many remains.
Anchitherium was a genus of three toed prehistoric horse that was a browser of plants rather than a grazer of grass, something that is most easily revealed by the teeth that have much lower crowns than those of known grazing horses. This is also why Anchitherium disappeared without leaving any modern descendants because as the Miocene progressed the coverage of plains environments continued to spread across the globe. This saw Anchitherium faced with an ever decreasing amount of suitable habitat with which it could browse from suitable plants. Meanwhile as this was happening other types of horses that had adapted to take advantage of the expanding grassy plains such as Merychippus thrived.
Further reading
- Description of some fossil vertebrates from the Upper Miocene of
Texas. - Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 37:1-18. -
O. P. Hay - 1924.
- Anchitherium (Perissodactyla, Mammalia) from the
Halamagai Formation
of Northern Junggar Basin, Xinjiang. - Vertebrata PalAsiatica. 43 (2):
100–109. - J. Ye, W.-Y. Wu & J. Meng - 2005.
- Three-toed Browsing Horse Anchitherium (Equidae)
from the Miocene of
Panama. - Journal of Paleontology 83(3):489-492. - Bruce J. McFadden -
2009.
- Anchitherium (Mammalia, Perissodactyla, Equidae)
from the Early
Miocene Hiramaki Formation, Gifu Prefecture, Japan, and its Implication
for the Early Diversification of Asian Anchitherium. - Journal of
Paleontology 84(4):763-773. - Kazunori Miyata & Yukimitsu
Tomida - 2010.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Random favourites
 |
 |
 |
 |