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This article needs images and diagrams. Alexander 007 1 July 2005 23:05 (UTC)
I agree. Got any? -- DanielCD 2 July 2005 14:03 (UTC)
The genuine horse? Is this term a scientific one, or is it just someone being ignorant and meaning the modern-day horse? The Singing Badger 22:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Was anybody here actually around 50 million years who could tell me if horses really 'evolved' from those stubby things, or if there just used to be more species of horses around back then, that aren't around now? There isn't exactly a complete fossil record, I always found this sort of speculation silly-- Horse master 03:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking a bit about the structure of this article, and I think that this article should describe the broad overview, and preferably not deal with seperate species. There are articles for most of the seperate species, and that are much better places to deal with those. That would lead to a more concise article, and is easier to structure to describe the big line. What are the opinions of other about this? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 04:10, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
How about "evolution of horses"? "The horse" with the definite article suggests there is something singular about what a horse is: a Platonic ideal, if you will.
This is of course not true: there are many horses (donkeys, zebras, as well as all the extinct horses): it is, after all, a "big bush" as someone else put it. The notion of a linear progress upward towards the "genuine" horse was actually cited in by several books I've read as an example of past misunderstandings about evolution. -- Saforrest 02:19, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Check out the times given for fossil taxa. These by no means add up:
Hyracotherium evolved in the early Eocene (54–34 million years ago).[...]For a span of about 20 million years, the Hyracotherium thrived, with few significant evolutionary changes occurring.[...]Approximately 50 million years ago, in the early-to-middle Eocene, Hyracotherium smoothly transitioned into Orohippus over a gradual series of changes.
Somebody please correct this. Much of it is contradictory because only the entire span of epochs and subepochs is given, not when precisely the distinct forms lived (for example, it is patently false that all Hyracotherium turned into Orohippus suddenly after 20 ma).
Also that stupid, 19th-century vintage diagram at the top should be banished to a discussion (see also Cope's rule and George Gaylord Simpson) way down below. It would be appropriate to Conservapedia as regards scientific merit. Better have no pic at the top than a misleading one. A better one could be built, but it's a slow and time-consuming process. Someone might want to build a new one from here. The relationships of the Neogene New and Old World branches as presented there are probably wrong; I have put a recent paper to this effect into the References section of an American equid article (IIRC) as an annotation (click "edit" there to check). From a scientific standpoint, the article (from what my limited experience with mammal evolution tells me) is as close to being complete content-wise as to being patent nonsense as regards the way the content is presented... Dysmorodrepanis 02:47, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
The endless debates by individuals offering zero constructive edits and no citations or actual work on the article to support their views are rather tiresome. Grammatical edits to improve flow and quality are fine, but to slap a contradiction tag on an entire article for a minor one sentence inconsistency is silly. I am not a palentologist, so I leave it to those more familiar with the material to fight out the details, but the bottom line is that Dysmorodrepanis' only real gripe appears to be grammatical, and the grammatical glitch that was commented upon was not in fact a contradiction, especially when the "contradiction" occurs three paragraphs away in a wholly different context. I will not argue that the article might benefit from a little copyediting for better flow, but to rant and rave on this topic without a willingness to offer constructive, verifiable, CITED edits is wasting everyone's time. Montanabw (talk) 16:29, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
It has been that we make subcategories for the Category Evolutionary biology. Now I wish to place this along with human evolution, cetation evolution into their owncategory. The only problem is what ca it be called and should there be one? Enlil Ninlil 05:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
There are many problems with this. According to Exploring Creation With Biology, by Dr. Jay Wile, there is no geographic site where this "macroevolutionary" sequence can be observed in one spot, instead, these fossils are gathered from several different continents. Secondly, all these creatures lived at the same time. Thirdly, the skeletons(excluding the leg bones and skulls) do not show any discernible pattern. Furthermore, even Dr. Niles Eldredge, curator of the American Museum of Natural History and a believer in macroevolution, says, in Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, p. 78, "I admit that an awful lot of that has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs[in ''his'' museum] us the exhibit on horse evolution prepared 50 years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that is lamentable..."
But if this sequence really is a macroevolutionary sequence, should this sequence not be found with all the animals at least on the same continent? Furthermore, I don't think it is fair to dismiss someone as "lying" or "in the business of misleading people" simply because they take a more logical viewpoint. Lordofthemarsh ( talk) 21:38, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
As is unfortunately too often the case for creationists when they attempt to discuss science and scientists, Wile and Sunderland are grossly misrepresenting the facts.
Sunderland's misleading quote-mining of Eldredge was so bad that Eldredge himself devoted six pages in one of his own books to discussing Sunderland's mendacity, including the very same quote that "Lordofthemarsh" repeats above. See Niles Eldredge's "The Triumph of Evolution (and the Failure of Creationism)", (2000), pages 129-134. Excerpts:
Earlier I said that creationists are poor scholars at best and at worst have been known to distort the words and works of scientists.
[...]
It is worthwhile taking a look at what Sunderland is up to here, and I'll do so by picking out the most egregious thing he has me saying -- or has to say about me. [...] I will single out here the worst case -- one that creationists are still using in their writings and debates (including on the Internet), and one that has defenders of evolution wondering if I really said what Sunderland has me saying in his book. The issue once again, is gaps -- the supposed lack of intermediates in the fossil record -- and revolves around what I purportedly said about horse evolution, or rather, about an exhibit on horse evolution that had been on continual display at the American Museum of Natural History for many years.
[...]
The dead horse that Sunderland and all other creationists beat is, of course, not stasis versus gradualism, but the existence of anatomical intermediates, especially if they exist in perfect stratigraphic order. I am here to tell you that my predecessors had indeed unearthed and mounted a wonderful series of skeletons, beginning with the Eocene Hyracotherium (the so-called dawn horse), with its small size, four toes on the front feet, five on the back feet, shortened face, and generalized perissodactyl teeth suitable for browsing, not grazing. Climbing up the Tertiary stratigraphic column of the American West, we find the horses becoming progressively bigger, with fewer toes (modern horses have but one on each foot) and more complicated teeth. The horses of the Pliocene are essentially modern.
This is not a made up story. Those fossils are real. They are in the proper order, and they are a spectacular example of anatomical intermediates found in the exact predicted sequence in the rock record. They are every creationist's nightmare.
[...] to imply that the old museum curators deliberately misled the public by arranging the order of these horse fossils as they saw fit is a damned lie.
[...]
Creationists hear what they want to hear because they believe what they want to believe. They think that all is fair in both love and war, and they see this as a culture war. But somehow I persist in the apparently quaint belief that lying, cheating, and distortions are inherently unchristian.
(Italics in original)
Eldredge explains (see the cited pages for details) that what he was trying to explain to Sunderland, which Sunderland misrepresented, was not that the museum display at that time (it has since been updated) was wrong, nor that the intermediates shown in the display were not actually intermediates (they were), but merely that it gave a simplified "steady straight line" impression of evolution, when in fact evolutionary progress is "bushier" and more sporadic, with variable rates of change.
This is far, far different from what Sunderland tried to misrepresent Eldredge as saying. -- Ichneumon ( talk) 22:10, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Lordofthemarsh: When you say that you want to see all intermediates "in the same spot", what do you mean -- stacked up directly on top of each other like a layer cake? That's an entirely unrealistic expectation, given the rarity of environmental conditions suitable for good fossilization, coupled with the rarity of any individual animal dying in a situation where its remains will be well preserved for subsequent fossilization (most carcasses are eaten and scattered or otherwise destroyed long before they have a chance to fossilize, you can observe this fact even today). Plus we can only retrieve fossils from strata that have been later uplifted and exposed by erosion or other processes. We're lucky enough to get the few snapshots of history that we have, a few here from one era, a few there from another era, etc. Don't expect the impossible -- not every animal that ever lived has left fossils in every region and era they ever lived in. The evolutionary fossil record is about as complete as we have any right to expect it to be, given the longshot statistical nature of fossilization and fossil discovery. Even so, every year new transitional fossils are fortuitously found that fill predicted evolutionary lineages. Imagine that.
As for the claim that some horse fossils are found on other continents, sure, that's to be expected as well. The course of horse evolution covers many millions of years, and horses are very mobile. Some of the branches of the horse family will of course have traversed continents -- primitive humans spread across most of the whole Earth in only about 30-40 thousand years. Horses could easily cover the same distance in millions. Plus note that most of the horse fossils are found in North America and Asia, which at the time was connected by a land bridge (that's how the original native Americans got here) and were effectively one extended continent. Surprise surprise, animals move around -- I think that even creationists acknowledge this. Finally, as Eldredge mentions in the above cite, most of the horse evolutionary sequence can be found in the American West alone, which is pretty much "one spot".
You say that the skeletons don't show any discernable evolutionary pattern. First, where are you getting this claim, and second, what kind of pattern would you *expect* to see? Or more to the point, what pattern do you think ought to be observed if evolutionary biology (the real thing, not the creationist cartoon version) is true?
You also say that "all these creatures lived at the same time". No, not by a long shot. You really ought to read, at a minimum, the Wikipedia article itself before you attempt to "improve" on it. The article itself documents that these animals didn't live all "at the same time", but in many cases tens of millions of years apart.
Finally, you imply that it's Wile and Sunderland (or perhaps creationists in general) who "take a more logical viewpoint". Not that I've noticed, frankly, especially if the current assertions are the best examples (e.g. how is it "more logical" to forget that horses roam around, and how is it "more logical" to misrepresent when the fossil horses lived?) But if you can provide anything else from the creationists which actually proves to be a "more logical viewpoint" after being fact-checked and analyzed for fallacious reasoning, I for one would be glad to consider it. -- Ichneumon ( talk) 22:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Carlw4514: It seems to me that the last paragraph in the "History of Research" section of the article already addresses your concerns. After reviewing that, is there anything more you still feel needs to be added? -- Ichneumon ( talk) 23:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
To WLU's last comment: Then unless a publisher that supports evolution says it, its's not reliable? There are many groups that support evolution, you consider them reliable, but not the ones that support creation? To Ichneumon: You claim that descendants can coexist with their ancestors. And to a certain extent that seems logical. However, when you consider the number of species "between" Eohippus and Equus, and the fact that according to the theory of evolution, the only way these changes would last is if the descendants had a survival advantage, you would think that Eohippus would be extinct by the time of Equus. Lordofthemarsh ( talk) 02:17, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Also, to Ichneumon: When I say discernable evolutionary pattern, I mean a smooth progession like we see with the jaw and feet. Why does the number of ribs and vertebrae vary widely for no apparent reason? Lordofthemarsh ( talk) 02:19, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
LordoftheMarsh: WLU did not in any way say that a publisher has to support evolution to be reliable. What he did say is that is that the publication you cited was not published in "an academic press, mainstream peer-reviewed journal". He is suggesting that you stick to sources which are properly vetted and reviewed by experts in the relevant fields, not a publication in which lacks those safeguards against blatantly erroneous or fallacious material.
Also, you said that I claim that descendants can coexist with their ancestors. While it is true that this can occur, I was not the one who wrote that here. Please read more carefully.
Furthermore, your comment about descendants coexisting with ancestors seems to be based on an incorrect assumption. You say that "you would think that Eohippus would be extinct by the time of Equus". Well, indeed it was; by the time of Equus, Eohippus had been extinct for tens of millions of years. Did you think that these two groups coexisted? They didn't, and a careful reading of the article would have made that pretty clear.
The article does mention that Miohippus and Mesohippus coexisted for a while, about 4 million years, but that's a much shorter time period, and not an unusually long time for competing species to both coexist for a while, if they even competed at all -- they may well have each specialized in different diets or ecological niches and not directly competed.
As to your question of why "the number of ribs and vertebrae vary widely for no apparent reason", the short answer is that a) while they did vary, it's an overstatement to say that they varied "widely", and b) rib and vertebrae counts are more easily variable than you might think.
The amount by which they actually varied isn't large. You probably learned of this variation from various creationist sources, which are fond of trying to make a point about it, as if they think it might be hard for evolution to explain (it isn't). A typical example is this quote from "Answers in Genesis":
The theory of horse evolution has very serious genetic problems to overcome. How do we explain the variations in the numbers of ribs and lumbar vertebrae within the imagined evolutionary progression? For example, the number of ribs in the supposedly 'intermediate' stages of the horse varies from 15 to 19 and then finally settles at 18. The number of lumbar vertebrae also allegedly swings from six to eight and then returns to six again.
Actually, that's not any kind of "serious genetic problem" at all. Rib count and lumbar vertebrae count is variable even within modern horses domestic horses, a single species. See for example [1], in which modern horses were found to have between 17 and 19 ribs (most having 18), and between 5 and 6 lumbar vertebrae (most having 6).
Furthermore, AiG sort of "forgets" to inform its readers that there's usually a trade-off between the two. "Losing" a rib causes a thoracic vertebrae to be counted as a lumbar vertebrae. So AiG tries to make the fluctuating rib/lumbar numbers look like two separate issues, when it's really just different sides of the same coin.
Furthermore, the number of "body" vertebrae (thoracic plus lumbar) can similarly fluctuate without any change in the total number of vertebrae, because a few more or fewer vertebrae can be incorporated into the sacrum (the section of fused vertebrae which "anchors" the spine to the pelvis). In general the more vertebrae in the sacrum, the fewer in the lumbar portion of the spine. Again, see the Stecher paper I cited above -- even in modern horses, there are anywhere from 4 to 6 sacral vertebrae, depending on how long the pelvis is, basically.
So even in modern horses, and certainly in different ancient horse species, it's "easy" (and certainly common) for the number of ribs, and the number of lumbar vertebrae, to vary. Nor is there any "serious genetic problem" in explaining this, as AiG very falsely claims. The extent of rib growth is controlled by the hox11 genes, and if they are disabled ribs can be induced to grow along the entire length of the spine, as you can read here: Why We Lack Spare Ribs. Clearly, minor changes in theh DNA sequence of these genes, or especially their promoter regions (which determine how strongly they are expressed) will cause the number of ribs to increase or decrease in the developing mammalian embryo. This is not a "serious genetic problem", it's pretty well understood. AiG sort of "forgot" to mention that as well.
Similarly, a simple increase or decrease in pelvis length (another easy genetic change -- growth rates are common targets of evolutionary change) will alter the number of lumbar vertebrae incorporated into the sacrum.
Finally, if your concern is over why the numbers might go up and down, instead of simply steadily up or steadily down, remember that contrary to the cartoon-version of evolution described in creationist literature, real-world evolution does not always proceed steadily in only one direction. Changing conditions, changing competition, conflicting necessities, or good old genetic drift can cause some traits to fluctuate first one way and then another, instead of just always moving in one direction. -- Ichneumon ( talk) 06:30, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Once again you show a ridiculous level of bias for a place that claims to be neutral. It seems to me that if 90% of the mainstream scientists jumped off a cliff, you would write that it was a good idea, never mind the fact that they died. You refuse to consider other evidence or allow other viewpoints to be discussed. To CarlW: I am not requesting that it be changed to that, merely that the main issues brought up by creationists be addressed. Even David Raup, a PHD and college professor, said: "The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be modified or discarded as a result of more detailed information. What appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and less gradualistic. So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated." To WLU: Reliable sources seems to be defined entirely on the basis of whether they agree with you. It is clear that evolution is protected by a conspiracy. Why are you so afraid to allow alternate ideas?
And finally, my question to Wikipedia: Do we seek the truth, as shown to us by logic and the evidence and expounded upon by arguments, or do we seek the opinion of the majority, whether they are right or not? Lordofthemarsh ( talk) 16:20, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Folks, the creation versus evolution talk can really go somewhere else, this has been debated over and over and over again, ad nauseum. Give it a rest. This article is about evolution. If you don't like evolution, argue about it someplace else. Or start an article called "God's creation of the horse" or something. Just take it ANYWHERE else. Montanabw (talk) 04:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I've added a not-in-source tag to the first paragraph of the article's "Return to the Americas" section. The referenced source doesn't claim that the natives had any race memory of the extinct horses of the Americas. The notion of race memory seems out of place in what is otherwise a scientifically themed article. The source also doesn't claim that any tribes had legends that the "the grass remembered them." It merely uses this as a poetic way of saying that the Americas were an ideal environment for the returning horses. Kommers ( talk) 20:52, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
See here. It might be adapted for this article. This entry from the Pharyngula blog discusses horse evolution in detail; it is very useful for this article. Dysmorodrepanis ( talk) 18:14, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
An important issue with this article that needs to be settled before much more other work happens, is the question of its topic. The article starts by wikilinking horse (Equus caballus) but a few paragraphs later defines horse as Equus, ie the entire genus. Pardon the pun, but Equus caballus and Equus are two very different "animals". -- Una Smith ( talk) 05:19, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
For consistency with articles like " evolution of mammals", " evolution of dinosaurs", and " evolution of cetaceans", the name of the article should be " evolution of horses". — Lowellian ( reply) 19:24, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
Why not just go for something sensible like Evolution of Equids (Horse species)? ThatPeskyCommoner ( talk) 22:48, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
I might be wrong, but I had heard that the straight-line evolution of the horse was rejected 90 years ago in 1920. Anyone wanna look into it? Mcoolister ( talk) 02:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
What remains is just one twig from a complex tree, most of whose branches died off. We do have a kinda 'straight-line' from the roots to our current twig-tip, but that's ignoring all the other branches which failed. ThatPeskyCommoner ( talk) 22:50, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
Hyracotherium appears to have been reclassified as a palaeothere, and this is not reflected in this article, which is therefore outdated. FunkMonk ( talk) 00:45, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
Per the citation [1] on the Hyracotherium page, the earliest ancestors of the horse were more than twice (60 cm, 15 kg) the size of a 6 kg fox. Changing the first sentence from fox-sized to small, dog-sized to regularize with the Hyracotherium article. Feel free to revert if you find more trustworthy source material.
Atcack ( talk) 01:57, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
I have proposed that
Four Foundations theory be merged into this article. However, I'm not sure how much actual material needs to be salvaged from there, as the theory appears to be almost entirely non-notable, if not entirely non-existent. A google books search for
"four foundations theory" horse gets exactly one hit, to a "book" which is actually a compilation of articles from ... Wikipedia. Searching one of the sources for the article, Bennett's Conquerors, for the string "four foundations" gives no result. Did this theory in fact ever exist, or is it a figment of some fanciful wikipedian's imagination? The terms "forest horse", "diluvial horse" and "tarpan" together get a few google books hits, almost all to works by Edwin Hartley Edwards. Could they in fact be a figment of his fanciful imagination? Is there even one scholarly source for any of this stuff?
Justlettersandnumbers (
talk)
10:10, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
This information "Whether Duchesnehippus was a subgenus of Epihippus or a distinct genus is disputed" seems to be wrong according to Palepbiology Database A possible confusion or dispute, if one wants to call it like that, only seems to exist in regards of the Orohippus and the Epihippus and that only for one or two species. I'd like to suggest to have this sentence deleted.-- Amrbc ( talk) 14:01, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
Hi, There is a thread here you may be interested in, about a consistent naming for articles dealing with evolution of taxa. Thanks! -- Cyclopia talk 17:05, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Grumblis.6 ( talk) 01:50, 25 September 2014 (UTC)Grumblis.6
>Both the NWSLH and Hippidium show adaptations to dry, barren ground, whereas the shortened legs of Hippidion may have been a response to sloped terrain
I thought much of this article was jargon-free but the above sentence and a few others won't be understood by those of our readers who aren't familiar with evolution in general. "...a response to sloped terrain" -- surely this could be written in plain English? Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors ( talk) 23:45, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
As we are not an American encyclopedia and as my attempt to remove US centrism was reverted without addressing the issue I have put a neutrality tag on it. It is viital that this does not read like an article in an American encyclopedia. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 19:08, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
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This might help. [1] Doug Weller talk 16:07, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
In some sources it is said Eohippus had 4 fingers and 3 toes (Encyclopaedia Britannica), but this article says it had 5 in each leg. What is the correct figure? And in the article there is an image of a Hyracotherium leg with 4 toes.-- Miguelferig ( talk) 17:06, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
Has this article been considered? 173.88.246.138 ( talk) 00:59, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Evolution of the horse article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
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Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
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![]() | A news item involving Evolution of the horse was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 1 July 2013. | ![]() |
This article needs images and diagrams. Alexander 007 1 July 2005 23:05 (UTC)
I agree. Got any? -- DanielCD 2 July 2005 14:03 (UTC)
The genuine horse? Is this term a scientific one, or is it just someone being ignorant and meaning the modern-day horse? The Singing Badger 22:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Was anybody here actually around 50 million years who could tell me if horses really 'evolved' from those stubby things, or if there just used to be more species of horses around back then, that aren't around now? There isn't exactly a complete fossil record, I always found this sort of speculation silly-- Horse master 03:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking a bit about the structure of this article, and I think that this article should describe the broad overview, and preferably not deal with seperate species. There are articles for most of the seperate species, and that are much better places to deal with those. That would lead to a more concise article, and is easier to structure to describe the big line. What are the opinions of other about this? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 04:10, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
How about "evolution of horses"? "The horse" with the definite article suggests there is something singular about what a horse is: a Platonic ideal, if you will.
This is of course not true: there are many horses (donkeys, zebras, as well as all the extinct horses): it is, after all, a "big bush" as someone else put it. The notion of a linear progress upward towards the "genuine" horse was actually cited in by several books I've read as an example of past misunderstandings about evolution. -- Saforrest 02:19, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Check out the times given for fossil taxa. These by no means add up:
Hyracotherium evolved in the early Eocene (54–34 million years ago).[...]For a span of about 20 million years, the Hyracotherium thrived, with few significant evolutionary changes occurring.[...]Approximately 50 million years ago, in the early-to-middle Eocene, Hyracotherium smoothly transitioned into Orohippus over a gradual series of changes.
Somebody please correct this. Much of it is contradictory because only the entire span of epochs and subepochs is given, not when precisely the distinct forms lived (for example, it is patently false that all Hyracotherium turned into Orohippus suddenly after 20 ma).
Also that stupid, 19th-century vintage diagram at the top should be banished to a discussion (see also Cope's rule and George Gaylord Simpson) way down below. It would be appropriate to Conservapedia as regards scientific merit. Better have no pic at the top than a misleading one. A better one could be built, but it's a slow and time-consuming process. Someone might want to build a new one from here. The relationships of the Neogene New and Old World branches as presented there are probably wrong; I have put a recent paper to this effect into the References section of an American equid article (IIRC) as an annotation (click "edit" there to check). From a scientific standpoint, the article (from what my limited experience with mammal evolution tells me) is as close to being complete content-wise as to being patent nonsense as regards the way the content is presented... Dysmorodrepanis 02:47, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
The endless debates by individuals offering zero constructive edits and no citations or actual work on the article to support their views are rather tiresome. Grammatical edits to improve flow and quality are fine, but to slap a contradiction tag on an entire article for a minor one sentence inconsistency is silly. I am not a palentologist, so I leave it to those more familiar with the material to fight out the details, but the bottom line is that Dysmorodrepanis' only real gripe appears to be grammatical, and the grammatical glitch that was commented upon was not in fact a contradiction, especially when the "contradiction" occurs three paragraphs away in a wholly different context. I will not argue that the article might benefit from a little copyediting for better flow, but to rant and rave on this topic without a willingness to offer constructive, verifiable, CITED edits is wasting everyone's time. Montanabw (talk) 16:29, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
It has been that we make subcategories for the Category Evolutionary biology. Now I wish to place this along with human evolution, cetation evolution into their owncategory. The only problem is what ca it be called and should there be one? Enlil Ninlil 05:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
There are many problems with this. According to Exploring Creation With Biology, by Dr. Jay Wile, there is no geographic site where this "macroevolutionary" sequence can be observed in one spot, instead, these fossils are gathered from several different continents. Secondly, all these creatures lived at the same time. Thirdly, the skeletons(excluding the leg bones and skulls) do not show any discernible pattern. Furthermore, even Dr. Niles Eldredge, curator of the American Museum of Natural History and a believer in macroevolution, says, in Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, p. 78, "I admit that an awful lot of that has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs[in ''his'' museum] us the exhibit on horse evolution prepared 50 years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that is lamentable..."
But if this sequence really is a macroevolutionary sequence, should this sequence not be found with all the animals at least on the same continent? Furthermore, I don't think it is fair to dismiss someone as "lying" or "in the business of misleading people" simply because they take a more logical viewpoint. Lordofthemarsh ( talk) 21:38, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
As is unfortunately too often the case for creationists when they attempt to discuss science and scientists, Wile and Sunderland are grossly misrepresenting the facts.
Sunderland's misleading quote-mining of Eldredge was so bad that Eldredge himself devoted six pages in one of his own books to discussing Sunderland's mendacity, including the very same quote that "Lordofthemarsh" repeats above. See Niles Eldredge's "The Triumph of Evolution (and the Failure of Creationism)", (2000), pages 129-134. Excerpts:
Earlier I said that creationists are poor scholars at best and at worst have been known to distort the words and works of scientists.
[...]
It is worthwhile taking a look at what Sunderland is up to here, and I'll do so by picking out the most egregious thing he has me saying -- or has to say about me. [...] I will single out here the worst case -- one that creationists are still using in their writings and debates (including on the Internet), and one that has defenders of evolution wondering if I really said what Sunderland has me saying in his book. The issue once again, is gaps -- the supposed lack of intermediates in the fossil record -- and revolves around what I purportedly said about horse evolution, or rather, about an exhibit on horse evolution that had been on continual display at the American Museum of Natural History for many years.
[...]
The dead horse that Sunderland and all other creationists beat is, of course, not stasis versus gradualism, but the existence of anatomical intermediates, especially if they exist in perfect stratigraphic order. I am here to tell you that my predecessors had indeed unearthed and mounted a wonderful series of skeletons, beginning with the Eocene Hyracotherium (the so-called dawn horse), with its small size, four toes on the front feet, five on the back feet, shortened face, and generalized perissodactyl teeth suitable for browsing, not grazing. Climbing up the Tertiary stratigraphic column of the American West, we find the horses becoming progressively bigger, with fewer toes (modern horses have but one on each foot) and more complicated teeth. The horses of the Pliocene are essentially modern.
This is not a made up story. Those fossils are real. They are in the proper order, and they are a spectacular example of anatomical intermediates found in the exact predicted sequence in the rock record. They are every creationist's nightmare.
[...] to imply that the old museum curators deliberately misled the public by arranging the order of these horse fossils as they saw fit is a damned lie.
[...]
Creationists hear what they want to hear because they believe what they want to believe. They think that all is fair in both love and war, and they see this as a culture war. But somehow I persist in the apparently quaint belief that lying, cheating, and distortions are inherently unchristian.
(Italics in original)
Eldredge explains (see the cited pages for details) that what he was trying to explain to Sunderland, which Sunderland misrepresented, was not that the museum display at that time (it has since been updated) was wrong, nor that the intermediates shown in the display were not actually intermediates (they were), but merely that it gave a simplified "steady straight line" impression of evolution, when in fact evolutionary progress is "bushier" and more sporadic, with variable rates of change.
This is far, far different from what Sunderland tried to misrepresent Eldredge as saying. -- Ichneumon ( talk) 22:10, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Lordofthemarsh: When you say that you want to see all intermediates "in the same spot", what do you mean -- stacked up directly on top of each other like a layer cake? That's an entirely unrealistic expectation, given the rarity of environmental conditions suitable for good fossilization, coupled with the rarity of any individual animal dying in a situation where its remains will be well preserved for subsequent fossilization (most carcasses are eaten and scattered or otherwise destroyed long before they have a chance to fossilize, you can observe this fact even today). Plus we can only retrieve fossils from strata that have been later uplifted and exposed by erosion or other processes. We're lucky enough to get the few snapshots of history that we have, a few here from one era, a few there from another era, etc. Don't expect the impossible -- not every animal that ever lived has left fossils in every region and era they ever lived in. The evolutionary fossil record is about as complete as we have any right to expect it to be, given the longshot statistical nature of fossilization and fossil discovery. Even so, every year new transitional fossils are fortuitously found that fill predicted evolutionary lineages. Imagine that.
As for the claim that some horse fossils are found on other continents, sure, that's to be expected as well. The course of horse evolution covers many millions of years, and horses are very mobile. Some of the branches of the horse family will of course have traversed continents -- primitive humans spread across most of the whole Earth in only about 30-40 thousand years. Horses could easily cover the same distance in millions. Plus note that most of the horse fossils are found in North America and Asia, which at the time was connected by a land bridge (that's how the original native Americans got here) and were effectively one extended continent. Surprise surprise, animals move around -- I think that even creationists acknowledge this. Finally, as Eldredge mentions in the above cite, most of the horse evolutionary sequence can be found in the American West alone, which is pretty much "one spot".
You say that the skeletons don't show any discernable evolutionary pattern. First, where are you getting this claim, and second, what kind of pattern would you *expect* to see? Or more to the point, what pattern do you think ought to be observed if evolutionary biology (the real thing, not the creationist cartoon version) is true?
You also say that "all these creatures lived at the same time". No, not by a long shot. You really ought to read, at a minimum, the Wikipedia article itself before you attempt to "improve" on it. The article itself documents that these animals didn't live all "at the same time", but in many cases tens of millions of years apart.
Finally, you imply that it's Wile and Sunderland (or perhaps creationists in general) who "take a more logical viewpoint". Not that I've noticed, frankly, especially if the current assertions are the best examples (e.g. how is it "more logical" to forget that horses roam around, and how is it "more logical" to misrepresent when the fossil horses lived?) But if you can provide anything else from the creationists which actually proves to be a "more logical viewpoint" after being fact-checked and analyzed for fallacious reasoning, I for one would be glad to consider it. -- Ichneumon ( talk) 22:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Carlw4514: It seems to me that the last paragraph in the "History of Research" section of the article already addresses your concerns. After reviewing that, is there anything more you still feel needs to be added? -- Ichneumon ( talk) 23:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
To WLU's last comment: Then unless a publisher that supports evolution says it, its's not reliable? There are many groups that support evolution, you consider them reliable, but not the ones that support creation? To Ichneumon: You claim that descendants can coexist with their ancestors. And to a certain extent that seems logical. However, when you consider the number of species "between" Eohippus and Equus, and the fact that according to the theory of evolution, the only way these changes would last is if the descendants had a survival advantage, you would think that Eohippus would be extinct by the time of Equus. Lordofthemarsh ( talk) 02:17, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Also, to Ichneumon: When I say discernable evolutionary pattern, I mean a smooth progession like we see with the jaw and feet. Why does the number of ribs and vertebrae vary widely for no apparent reason? Lordofthemarsh ( talk) 02:19, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
LordoftheMarsh: WLU did not in any way say that a publisher has to support evolution to be reliable. What he did say is that is that the publication you cited was not published in "an academic press, mainstream peer-reviewed journal". He is suggesting that you stick to sources which are properly vetted and reviewed by experts in the relevant fields, not a publication in which lacks those safeguards against blatantly erroneous or fallacious material.
Also, you said that I claim that descendants can coexist with their ancestors. While it is true that this can occur, I was not the one who wrote that here. Please read more carefully.
Furthermore, your comment about descendants coexisting with ancestors seems to be based on an incorrect assumption. You say that "you would think that Eohippus would be extinct by the time of Equus". Well, indeed it was; by the time of Equus, Eohippus had been extinct for tens of millions of years. Did you think that these two groups coexisted? They didn't, and a careful reading of the article would have made that pretty clear.
The article does mention that Miohippus and Mesohippus coexisted for a while, about 4 million years, but that's a much shorter time period, and not an unusually long time for competing species to both coexist for a while, if they even competed at all -- they may well have each specialized in different diets or ecological niches and not directly competed.
As to your question of why "the number of ribs and vertebrae vary widely for no apparent reason", the short answer is that a) while they did vary, it's an overstatement to say that they varied "widely", and b) rib and vertebrae counts are more easily variable than you might think.
The amount by which they actually varied isn't large. You probably learned of this variation from various creationist sources, which are fond of trying to make a point about it, as if they think it might be hard for evolution to explain (it isn't). A typical example is this quote from "Answers in Genesis":
The theory of horse evolution has very serious genetic problems to overcome. How do we explain the variations in the numbers of ribs and lumbar vertebrae within the imagined evolutionary progression? For example, the number of ribs in the supposedly 'intermediate' stages of the horse varies from 15 to 19 and then finally settles at 18. The number of lumbar vertebrae also allegedly swings from six to eight and then returns to six again.
Actually, that's not any kind of "serious genetic problem" at all. Rib count and lumbar vertebrae count is variable even within modern horses domestic horses, a single species. See for example [1], in which modern horses were found to have between 17 and 19 ribs (most having 18), and between 5 and 6 lumbar vertebrae (most having 6).
Furthermore, AiG sort of "forgets" to inform its readers that there's usually a trade-off between the two. "Losing" a rib causes a thoracic vertebrae to be counted as a lumbar vertebrae. So AiG tries to make the fluctuating rib/lumbar numbers look like two separate issues, when it's really just different sides of the same coin.
Furthermore, the number of "body" vertebrae (thoracic plus lumbar) can similarly fluctuate without any change in the total number of vertebrae, because a few more or fewer vertebrae can be incorporated into the sacrum (the section of fused vertebrae which "anchors" the spine to the pelvis). In general the more vertebrae in the sacrum, the fewer in the lumbar portion of the spine. Again, see the Stecher paper I cited above -- even in modern horses, there are anywhere from 4 to 6 sacral vertebrae, depending on how long the pelvis is, basically.
So even in modern horses, and certainly in different ancient horse species, it's "easy" (and certainly common) for the number of ribs, and the number of lumbar vertebrae, to vary. Nor is there any "serious genetic problem" in explaining this, as AiG very falsely claims. The extent of rib growth is controlled by the hox11 genes, and if they are disabled ribs can be induced to grow along the entire length of the spine, as you can read here: Why We Lack Spare Ribs. Clearly, minor changes in theh DNA sequence of these genes, or especially their promoter regions (which determine how strongly they are expressed) will cause the number of ribs to increase or decrease in the developing mammalian embryo. This is not a "serious genetic problem", it's pretty well understood. AiG sort of "forgot" to mention that as well.
Similarly, a simple increase or decrease in pelvis length (another easy genetic change -- growth rates are common targets of evolutionary change) will alter the number of lumbar vertebrae incorporated into the sacrum.
Finally, if your concern is over why the numbers might go up and down, instead of simply steadily up or steadily down, remember that contrary to the cartoon-version of evolution described in creationist literature, real-world evolution does not always proceed steadily in only one direction. Changing conditions, changing competition, conflicting necessities, or good old genetic drift can cause some traits to fluctuate first one way and then another, instead of just always moving in one direction. -- Ichneumon ( talk) 06:30, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Once again you show a ridiculous level of bias for a place that claims to be neutral. It seems to me that if 90% of the mainstream scientists jumped off a cliff, you would write that it was a good idea, never mind the fact that they died. You refuse to consider other evidence or allow other viewpoints to be discussed. To CarlW: I am not requesting that it be changed to that, merely that the main issues brought up by creationists be addressed. Even David Raup, a PHD and college professor, said: "The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be modified or discarded as a result of more detailed information. What appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and less gradualistic. So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated." To WLU: Reliable sources seems to be defined entirely on the basis of whether they agree with you. It is clear that evolution is protected by a conspiracy. Why are you so afraid to allow alternate ideas?
And finally, my question to Wikipedia: Do we seek the truth, as shown to us by logic and the evidence and expounded upon by arguments, or do we seek the opinion of the majority, whether they are right or not? Lordofthemarsh ( talk) 16:20, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Folks, the creation versus evolution talk can really go somewhere else, this has been debated over and over and over again, ad nauseum. Give it a rest. This article is about evolution. If you don't like evolution, argue about it someplace else. Or start an article called "God's creation of the horse" or something. Just take it ANYWHERE else. Montanabw (talk) 04:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I've added a not-in-source tag to the first paragraph of the article's "Return to the Americas" section. The referenced source doesn't claim that the natives had any race memory of the extinct horses of the Americas. The notion of race memory seems out of place in what is otherwise a scientifically themed article. The source also doesn't claim that any tribes had legends that the "the grass remembered them." It merely uses this as a poetic way of saying that the Americas were an ideal environment for the returning horses. Kommers ( talk) 20:52, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
See here. It might be adapted for this article. This entry from the Pharyngula blog discusses horse evolution in detail; it is very useful for this article. Dysmorodrepanis ( talk) 18:14, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
An important issue with this article that needs to be settled before much more other work happens, is the question of its topic. The article starts by wikilinking horse (Equus caballus) but a few paragraphs later defines horse as Equus, ie the entire genus. Pardon the pun, but Equus caballus and Equus are two very different "animals". -- Una Smith ( talk) 05:19, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
For consistency with articles like " evolution of mammals", " evolution of dinosaurs", and " evolution of cetaceans", the name of the article should be " evolution of horses". — Lowellian ( reply) 19:24, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
Why not just go for something sensible like Evolution of Equids (Horse species)? ThatPeskyCommoner ( talk) 22:48, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
I might be wrong, but I had heard that the straight-line evolution of the horse was rejected 90 years ago in 1920. Anyone wanna look into it? Mcoolister ( talk) 02:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
What remains is just one twig from a complex tree, most of whose branches died off. We do have a kinda 'straight-line' from the roots to our current twig-tip, but that's ignoring all the other branches which failed. ThatPeskyCommoner ( talk) 22:50, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
Hyracotherium appears to have been reclassified as a palaeothere, and this is not reflected in this article, which is therefore outdated. FunkMonk ( talk) 00:45, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
Per the citation [1] on the Hyracotherium page, the earliest ancestors of the horse were more than twice (60 cm, 15 kg) the size of a 6 kg fox. Changing the first sentence from fox-sized to small, dog-sized to regularize with the Hyracotherium article. Feel free to revert if you find more trustworthy source material.
Atcack ( talk) 01:57, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
I have proposed that
Four Foundations theory be merged into this article. However, I'm not sure how much actual material needs to be salvaged from there, as the theory appears to be almost entirely non-notable, if not entirely non-existent. A google books search for
"four foundations theory" horse gets exactly one hit, to a "book" which is actually a compilation of articles from ... Wikipedia. Searching one of the sources for the article, Bennett's Conquerors, for the string "four foundations" gives no result. Did this theory in fact ever exist, or is it a figment of some fanciful wikipedian's imagination? The terms "forest horse", "diluvial horse" and "tarpan" together get a few google books hits, almost all to works by Edwin Hartley Edwards. Could they in fact be a figment of his fanciful imagination? Is there even one scholarly source for any of this stuff?
Justlettersandnumbers (
talk)
10:10, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
This information "Whether Duchesnehippus was a subgenus of Epihippus or a distinct genus is disputed" seems to be wrong according to Palepbiology Database A possible confusion or dispute, if one wants to call it like that, only seems to exist in regards of the Orohippus and the Epihippus and that only for one or two species. I'd like to suggest to have this sentence deleted.-- Amrbc ( talk) 14:01, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
Hi, There is a thread here you may be interested in, about a consistent naming for articles dealing with evolution of taxa. Thanks! -- Cyclopia talk 17:05, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Grumblis.6 ( talk) 01:50, 25 September 2014 (UTC)Grumblis.6
>Both the NWSLH and Hippidium show adaptations to dry, barren ground, whereas the shortened legs of Hippidion may have been a response to sloped terrain
I thought much of this article was jargon-free but the above sentence and a few others won't be understood by those of our readers who aren't familiar with evolution in general. "...a response to sloped terrain" -- surely this could be written in plain English? Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors ( talk) 23:45, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
As we are not an American encyclopedia and as my attempt to remove US centrism was reverted without addressing the issue I have put a neutrality tag on it. It is viital that this does not read like an article in an American encyclopedia. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 19:08, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
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This might help. [1] Doug Weller talk 16:07, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
In some sources it is said Eohippus had 4 fingers and 3 toes (Encyclopaedia Britannica), but this article says it had 5 in each leg. What is the correct figure? And in the article there is an image of a Hyracotherium leg with 4 toes.-- Miguelferig ( talk) 17:06, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
Has this article been considered? 173.88.246.138 ( talk) 00:59, 22 October 2021 (UTC)