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A reappraisal of the systematics, biogeography, and evolution of fossil horses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

M. O. Woodburne  and
Bruce J. MacFadden
M. O. Woodburne
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside, California 92521
Bruce J. MacFadden
Affiliation:
Florida State Museum, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611
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Extract

The founders of North American vertebrate paleontology, F. V. Hayden, Joseph Leidy, E. D. Cope, O. C. Marsh, and their colleagues, collected and described the first suites of fossil mammals obtained from the rich Tertiary successions of the western United States. Among them were remains of fossil horses, and subsequent study of these resulted in an interpretation that supported the concept of Darwinian gradualism as the major mode of evolution. The fossil record of horses also contributed importantly to the demise of orthogenesis as an evolutionary pattern, and to the evaluation of evolutionary rates and long-term evolutionary trends in a major phyletic group of organisms.

Type
Research Article
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , Fall 1982 , pp. 315 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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