Three-toed horse skeleton

Three-toed horse skeleton

P-63409

Three-toed horse

Horse, odd-toed ungulate

Near Dixon, Rio Arriba County, New Mexico

Middle Miocene, 14 million years ago

Skull and partial articulated skeleton

A skull and partial skeleton of a fossil horse was found in 2009 by an 11 year old school girl near Dixon, between Española and Taos, in northern New Mexico. She was walking her dog in the badlands behind her home when she literally tripped over the fossil. She informed a local geologist about the discovery, and eventually the skeleton was collected by a large crew consisting of a paleontologist from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History, a geologist from the New Mexico Bureau of Mines, an archaeologist from the U. S. Bureau of Land Management, and seven pre-teenage girls and their mothers from the Dixon area. The skeleton consists of a complete skull but lacks the lower jaws, and also has both articulated (in life position) front limbs and one articulated hind limb of the extinct three-toed horse Protohippus. Miocene horses had three toes on each limb: a large 3rd or central digit and small side toes with hooves on the 2nd and 4th digits. Living horses have only one toe on each limb, on the 3rd digit.