Anchitherium

Name: Anchitherium ‭(‬Near beast‭)‬.
Phonetic: An-chee-fee-ree-um.
Named By: Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer‭ ‬-‭ ‬1844.‭
Classification: Chordata,‭ ‬Mammalia,‭ ‬Perissodactyla,‭ ‬Equidae,‭ ‬Anchitheriinae.
Species: A.‭ ‬ezquerrae‭ (‬type‭)‬,‭ ‬A.‭ ‬alberdiae,‭ ‬A.‭ ‬aurelianense,‭ ‬A.‭ ‬australis,‭ ‬A.‭ ‬castellanum,‭ ‬A.‭ ‬clarencei,‭ ‬A.‭ ‬corcolense,‭ ‬A.‭ ‬cursor,‭ ‬A.‭ ‬gobiense,‭ ‬A.‭ ‬hippoides,‭ ‬A.‭ ‬matritense,‭ ‬A.‭ ‬navasotae,‭ ‬A.‭ ‬parequinum,‭ ‬A.‭ ‬procerum.
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: 60‭ ‬centimetres high at the shoulder.
Known locations: Across Eurasia and North America,‭ ‬but particularly well known from Europe and the USA.
Time period: Miocene.
Fossil representation: Many remains.




       Anchitherium was a genus of three toed prehistoric horse that was a browser of plants rather than a grazer of grass,‭ ‬something that is most easily revealed by the teeth that have much lower crowns than those of known grazing horses.‭ ‬This is also why Anchitherium disappeared without leaving any modern descendants because as the Miocene progressed the coverage of plains environments continued to spread across the globe.‭ ‬This saw Anchitherium faced with an ever decreasing amount of suitable habitat with which it could browse from suitable plants.‭ ‬Meanwhile as this was happening other types of horses that had adapted to take advantage of the expanding grassy plains such as Merychippus thrived.‭

Further reading
- Description of some fossil vertebrates from the Upper Miocene of Texas. - Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 37:1-18. - O. P. Hay - 1924.
- Anchitherium (Perissodactyla, Mammalia) from the Halamagai Formation of Northern Junggar Basin, Xinjiang. - Vertebrata PalAsiatica. 43 (2): 100–109. - J. Ye, W.-Y. Wu & J. Meng - 2005.
- Three-toed Browsing Horse Anchitherium (Equidae) from the Miocene of Panama. - Journal of Paleontology 83(3):489-492. - Bruce J. McFadden - 2009.
- Anchitherium (Mammalia, Perissodactyla, Equidae) from the Early Miocene Hiramaki Formation, Gifu Prefecture, Japan, and its Implication for the Early Diversification of Asian Anchitherium. - Journal of Paleontology 84(4):763-773. - Kazunori Miyata & Yukimitsu Tomida - 2010.



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