A tiny, 48-million-year-old primate Horse Looked Like a Badger
The 48-million-year-old beast could have resembled a modern-day badger, according to a reconstruction of a wild horse the size of a small dog.
Experts named the early equid ‘Propalaeotherium voigti’ after it was discovered in an oil pit in Messel, near Frankfurt, in southern Germany, in 2015.
The Messel Pit, which was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in late 1995, is a decommissioned quarry that has yielded numerous amazingly preserved fossils.
A reconstruction of a primitive horse the size of a small dog has revealed that the 48-million-year old creature may have looked like a modern-day badger. Pictured, the P. voigti fossil
These have included mammals, fish, beetles, and even crocodiles and alligators.
Propalaeotherium voigti belonged to a genus of ancestral horses that was native to both Europe and Asia during the early Eocene epoch and broadly resembled the tapirs of today’s South America and Asia.
These creatures would have weighed in at just around 22 pounds (or 10 kilograms) and stood at around 20 inches (50 centimeters) tall.
According to experts, P. voigti would have sported a coat much like that of a modern-day deer and would have lived in small herds.
The fossilised specimen’s short neck, arched back and splayed, nail-life ‘hooflets’ — rather that the hooves of modern horses — indicate that it was adapted for a life of foraging amid the subtropical rainforests that once covered Europe.
In fact, fossil evidence from the Messel oil pit has revealed that the diminutive horses dined on berries and leaf matter that they picked from the forest floor.
It was not be until the late Eocene — around 33.9 million years ago — that horses in general began to evolve longer legs and shift their weight onto individual toes in order to better escape predation as their habitats shifted to grassland.
Palaeontologist Martin Fischer of the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena collaborated with artists Amir Andikfar and Jonas Lauströer to turn a high-resolution computer tomography (or CT) scan of the Propalaeotherium voigti specimen into a 3D reconstruction, pictured
It was this change, also, which resulted in the horse family moving their diet from foliage to grass — selecting for the evolution of longer, more durable teeth.
Propalaeotherium voigti is to be recognised this year — the 25th anniversary of the Messel pit obtaining UNESCO status — as the ‘heraldic animal’ by the Hessian Landesmuseum Darmstadt, which holds the largest collection of fossils from the pit.
Palaeontologist Martin Fischer of the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena collaborated with artists Amir Andikfar and Jonas Lauströer to turn a high-resolution computer tomography (or CT) scan of the specimen into a 3D reconstruction.
The reconstruction will be on display at the Hessian Landesmuseum Darmstadt from August 18, 2023.
Related Post
The entire tomb is filled with signs and symbols that mention Queen Nefertiti and after some time passed and linguistic experts managed to decipher the stories told here, the team was baffled.
The mystery of the Solar Temple of Abu Gurab and its “Star Gate” comes to light
Thuya, the mother of Queen Tiye, left a monumental legacy by becoming the grandmother of Akhenaten and Tutankhamun.
The oldest traditions lead us to believe that blacks were the first inhabitants of Mexico.
The REAL face of King Tut: The pharaoh had feminine hips, clubfoot, and protruding teeth according to the ‘virtual autopsy,’ which also revealed that his parents were brother and sister.
The “oldest gold of humanity” was found in the Varna necropolis, on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast