Dinohippus
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| ?Dinohippus Conservation status: Fossil |
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Dinohippus was the most common horse in North America in the late Pliocene, and likely gave rise to Equus. Like Equus, the Dinohippus did not have a dished face.
Equus has a distinctive passive "stay apparatus," formed by bones and tendons, to help it conserve energy while standing for long periods. Dinohippus is the first horse to show a rudimentary form of this character, providing additional evidence of the close relationship between Dinohippus and Equus. [1]
It was originally thought that Dinohippus was a monodactyl horse, but a 1981 fossil find in Nebraska shows that some were tridactyl. [2]
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