File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17539089073).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo04amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL beside related fossil forms, and special synoptic exhibits will illus- trate the structure and evolution of the most important groups.
Text Appearing After Image:
MODEL OF THE FOUR-TOED HORSE. HE Department of Vertebrate Palaeontology has just added to its series of models of fossil mammals on exhibition in Hall No. 406 a life-sized model of the little Four-toed Horse (Protorohippus), the earliest known ancestor of the modern horses, asses and zebras. These models have been prepared under the direction of Professor Osborn by Mr. Charles R. Knight, and have been pre- sented to the Museum by J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq. The present model is based upon exhaustive studies by Professor Osborn and Mr. Gidley of the skeleton of the Four-Toed Horse and other rare specimens belonging to the Museum. It forms a most interest- ing and instructive addition to the exhibit in the Horse Alcove of the Hall of Fossil Mammals. Although Protorohippus was remarkably different from the modern Horse in the proportions of body and limbs, in the number of toes, the length of the head, and in many other important characteristics, the artist has contrived to impress upon the restoration those details of character and pose which stamp it unmistakably as an ancestral horse, and v.'hich are warranted by the results of the study given to the skeleton, and by the long line of intermediate stages leading up into the modern Horse which have been found in the successive formations of the western Badlands. The animal, as is indicated by the skeleton, was less than thirteen inches high at the shoulder, or about the size of a fox- terrier. The modern draught horse, the skeleton of which is ex- hibited in the same alcove, is 65 inches high at the shoulder, and its skull alone is larger than the entire body of its little four-toed ancestor. The limbs, and especially the feet, of the model, are much shorter in proportion and the toes, four on the fore-foot and three on the hind-foot, are very different from those of the modern horse. These features, considered in connection with the elon- 40

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