Evolution of Horse

[Sameerr]

Mostly i will be interested in large herbivorous animals. For a longtime i didn't much attempted to read about some of them as i was busy in something. Last year slowly i was showing some interest to know about some modern gentle giants other than elephants, the latter which i know very well. Usually i would upload a comparison and discuss things like these but since now iam not in a condition to do that, i just made this as a normal post.

As for bovines, Gaur seems to be pretty impressive. Then i turned my attention to horses. It won't surprise some of you that i would have searched for the largest horse. I noted that the draft horses are big and i like some of them having heavily muscular build. In this breed, i selected Shire horse and Belgian horse to my favourite list of animals.

The ancestors of modern animals are bigger in most cases. We know about extinct giant Bears, Bovids, Crocodiles, Camelids, Proboscideans, Felines etc etc. Now when it comes to giant horses, there is not much details about them. 

If any of you horse lovers don't know about these things then this may sound interesting for you. I read in some sites where they mention that the horses we have now are the biggest than their ancestors which is not exactly true. There are some interesting informations about some giant equids from the paleontologist Vera Eisenmann.

http://www.vera-eisenmann.com

http://www.vera-eisenmann.com/IMG/pdf/136.Gigantic_horses.pdf

(Gigantic equids (Equus calobatus, E. capensis(cape giant zebra), E. enormis, E. giganteus, E. major, E. singularis, E. suessenbornensis, E. verae), (E.eisenmannae, E. koobiforensis), Pliocene, Pleistocene, North America, Beringida, Asia, Europe, Africa.

(The largest in the world monodactyl equids (modern draft horses, E. calobatus, E. capensis, E. enormis, E. giganteus, E.major, E. singularis, E. suessenbornensis, E. verae, and other fossils) are compared using different parameters: skull basilar lengths, occlusal dimensions of the upper cheek teeth, metapodial lengths and distal widths, estimated weights and withers heights. Although the estimations proved extremely difficult, some fossil equids could probably stand at least 180 cm at the withers and weighed more than 1000 kilos. Wild caballines and gigantic zebras never reached the size of Pliocene and Early Pleistocene equids. The North American stilt-legged equids have no equivalent among the Old World fossil or modern species.)

So there are some of those giant horses names and eventhough the sizes are uncertain, maybe one or two of them were in similar in size with E.giganteus. Then there is a 2m tall Giant cape zebra and i don't know how legit information this is that there was a giant donkey (Assinus giganteus).

The evolution of the horses usually talk about the dog-sized Eohippus into the modern horse. I wondered why the Giant horse (Equus giganteus) along with very few other giant equids was left out in the horse evolution charts. Who knows, Equus giganteus or possibly one more giant horse species that were either the size of the modern draft horses or somewhat larger being 21 - 23 hands high at withers and weighed 1,500 kg - 1,900 kg or more.