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From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
Subject: Horses (was: Etruscans)
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Steve Whittet replied to me thus:

> >> Just to give an analogy, after man arrived in the New World and
> >> hunted big game like bears, bison and mamoths to the point of
> >> extinction horses evolved some twenty two new *species* to fill
> >> the niche. Man has been in New Guinea about 70 times as long
> >> as it took the new World horses to evolve.

Note the structure of this claim is that the following events
occurred, in the given order:

	1.  Man arrived in the New World.
	2.  Man hunted bears, bison, and mammoths to extinction
	3.  Horses evolved 22 new species to fill the niche
	    (a horse filling a bear's niche would be quite something!)

> >Now this is the merest rubbish.  Within historic times there have
> >been only two species of horses (plus two ass and three zebra
> >species):

I said "historic times", i.e. 6,000 B.P. at most.  Even extending
that back to 30,000 B.P. or so, the date of event 1 above
has nothing to do with equine evolution.

[irrelevancies removed]

[Table showing evolution of equids from *Hyracotherium* to
*Equus* removed: the most *recent* event in this table is
2 My B.P.]

[more on pre-*Equus* species removed]

> However, one-toed
> Equus was very successful. Until about 1 million years ago, there
> were Equus species all over Africa, Asia, Europe, North America,
> and South America, in enormous migrating herds that must easily
> have equalled the great North American bison herds, or the huge
> wildebeest migrations in Africa.
> 
> In the late Pleistocene there was a set of devastating extinctions
> that killed off most of the large mammals in North and South America.
> All the horses of North and South America died out (along with the
> mammoths and saber-tooth tigers). These extinctions seem to have
> been caused by a combination of climatic changes and overhunting
> by humans, who had just reached the New World.
> 
> For the first time in tens of millions of years, there were no equids
> in the Americas.

Note well the dating.  *Until about 1 My ago* there were many
species of horses.  *Nobody* thinks that there were *Homo sapiens*
in the New World 1 My ago.

[3 species of zebras removed]

>      Equus caballus, the true horse, which once had several subspecies.

Subspecies aren't species.

[P's wild horse and 2 species of asses removed]

> In North America Equus Caballus developed into a number of species
> to fill the niches of other animals going extinct sometime before
> it went extinct itself.

Which was in the 1 My time frame, not the 30Ky (or 11Ky) time frame.
Or do you think 60,000-90,000 years negligible?
 
> >Mr. Whittet is plainly smoking some unusual juice here.
> 
> Research first, then post.

Understand what you read, too.

-- 
John Cowan						cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban
