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)
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.