Eohippus Brain Replica

Description

Eohippus Brain Replica measures 2.4 x 1.1 x 1.2 inches. Eohippus Brain Replica is museum quality polyurethane resin cast. Made in USA. Our precise brain replica can be used as a teaching tool, museum brain exhibit, home décor brain, or office décor brain.

Eohippus is an extinct genus of small equid ungulates. The only species is E. angustidens, which was long considered a species of Hyracotherium (now strictly defined as a member of the Palaeotheriidae rather than the Equidae). Its remains have been identified in North America and date to the Early Eocene (Ypresian stage).

Eohippus stood at about 12 in (30 cm), or three hands tall, at the shoulder. It has four toes on its front feet and three toes on the hind feet, each toe ending in a hoof. Its incisors, molars and premolars resemble modern Equus. However, a differentiating trait of Eohippus is its large canine teeth. This small dog-sized animal represents the oldest known horse. It had a primitive short face, with eye sockets in the middle and a short diastema — the space between the front teeth and the cheek teeth.

Eohippus, (genus Hyracotherium), extinct group of mammals that were the first known horses. They flourished in North America and Europe during the early part of the Eocene Epoch (56 million to 33.9 million years ago). Even though these animals are more commonly known as Eohippus, a name given by the American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh, they are properly placed in the genus Hyracotherium, the name given earlier by British paleontologist Richard Owen.

Hyracotherium is now believed to be a primitive horse, the earliest-known member of the family Equidae. It lived in both the Old World and in North America. Specimens found in the United States were initially given the name “eohippus” by O. Marsh in 1876.

Paleontologists later determined that eohippus was really the same genus as Hyracotherium and based on scientific procedure, the older name Hyracotherium (1840) takes precedence over, and includes, eohippus (1876).

Hyracotherium ​(50 Million Years Ago),​ ​aka Eohippus ​(“dawn horse”)​, ​two feet high at the shoulder and 50 pounds–is the earliest identified horse ancestor, an inoffensive, deer-like mammal that traveled​ ​the plains of North America; four toes on its front feet and three on its rear feet. Hyracotherium had 4 toes on the front foot, and 3 toes on the hind foot.

The transition from Hyracotherium to Equus involved significant changes in skull shape, size, and dental adaptations reflecting the evolution of horses from small forest browsers to large grassland grazers. These adaptations allowed them to thrive in new environments.

The great science artist Charles Knight of the American Museum of Natural History reconstructed Hyracotherium with a striped coat because it was a browsing horse. Browsing animals we know today often have striped coats to camouflage them in the play of light and dark on the forest floor.

Some scientists believe that species of Hyracotherium are not only ancestral to the horse, but also to the horse’s other perissodactyl relatives like the rhinos and tapirs.

Scientific classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Perissodactyla
Family: Equidae
Genus: †Eohippus
Marsh, 1876
Species: †E. angustidens
Binomial name: †Eohippus angustidens
(Cope, 1875)