50-million-year-old fossil horse unearthed
KEMMERER, Wyo. (AP)--Wyoming has lots of horses, wild horses, quarter horses and pack horses--all kinds of horses. But Jim Tynsky has one that's not like any other he, or anyone else for that matter, has ever seen. Ever.
This horse was small, some might say tiny, but it's definitely a horse with a very long name, hyracotherium. And it's old, not old in years, or even old in centuries, but very, very old. About 50 million years old.
While walking across the dried up bed of Fossil Lake near Kemmerer last September, looking for fossil fish, Tynsky thought he had found a turtle when he first saw the small pointy foot. When he and his helper, Scott Banta, lifted up the layers of Green River Formation rock above that foot he saw what he thought must be a horse.
Since Tynsky could only clearly see the foot while the rest of the horse was covered in a thin layer of rock with only a hint of the horse's bones showing, he drove the whole slab of rock to South Dakota.
There Danny Ulmer of Deadwood spent about 175 to 200 hours chipping and grinding the layer of stone off the petrified bones and the four small fish near the little horse and also exposed a few snail shells. Later Tynsky drove the rock back to Kemmerer for fear of having it broken if it were shipped home.
He will keep the animal he wants to call "Dawn" in a bank vault so it will be safe. He noted he has been offered up to $250,000 for the stone, but has declined.
A paleoanthropologist, John P. Alexander from Washington, first told Tynsky it wasn't a horse but instead maybe a prehistoric pig, a tapir, Tynsky said he still maintained it was a horse.
The animal had four toes on the front feet and three on the back feet, not three in front like a tapir, plus 44 teeth and a six-inch skull. The expert agreed it truly was an early form of the horse from the Eocene period, 45 million to 55 million years ago.
It is the most complete horse of its kind ever found since the first partial specimen was discovered about 150 years ago.
Tynsky explained that it is "most unlikely" to find a mammal in a marine environment but that the fish surrounding the horse are the proof of where it was found. Alexander has suggested that the animal probably somehow fell into the lake while still alive for the animal to be so well preserved.
It was found in the midst of a mass mortality layer of fish where many of the area's fossil fish, most commonly knightia, are found along with the occasional rarer items such as dragonflies, sting rays, palm fronds and other species of fish.
Tynsky speculates that the animal may have been swimming and drowned or perhaps, as Anderson suggested, a large bird could have carried it as prey and dropped it into the lake.
Either way it was probably alive when it went into the water in order to be such a complete specimen, he noted. Banta prefers to think it was carried there in a flood. The horse isn't talking.
Banta explained that the two fossil hunters had talked about finding a three-toed horse all last year and said it would be like winning the lottery. He also said the fossil is "the unicorn of the formation, a mythical beast" since even partial skeletons are so rarely found.
Since the fossil was found on property Tynsky leases from the Lewis Horse Ranch near Kemmerer, he said "that makes it the oldest horse ranch" of any in the world since the little horse is dated at 50 million years old.
Anderson has since written, "This horse skeleton is the most scientifically important fossil ever found in these rocks."
Lance Grande, curator of fossil fish at the Field Museum in Chicago, is planning to travel to Kemmerer in June to examine the fossil. Tynsky said a writer for National Geographic is also planning to come as well to see the little horse.
Tynsky had hoped to be able to exhibit his find at Fossil Butte National Monument but insurance problems have made that impossible. He has been told that no company will insure the horse but perhaps Lloyds of London might do so. Now he hopes to have a cast made of the fossil so it can eventually be put on public display.
As a fossil hunter for 30 years, Tynsky has also found a 13-foot crocodile some 20 years ago; a 5-foot, 4-inch turtle; a bat; many types of fish; plants; stingrays; and a fossil frog, another tiny thing, about 2 inches long. He also found a large fish about 20 inches long that has another smaller fish in its mouth.
As to the history of the horse and its early relatives, they were previously called Eohippus or "dawn horse" by experts in such matters. But more recently their genus has been named Hyracotherium which means "mole beast" or "hyrax-like beast."
The horse is definitely little, about the size of a small dog with various scientific resources describing it as like a small fox; like a small dog; 8 or 9 inches at the shoulder; weighing 30 to 40 pounds. Tynsky's horse would have measured just a little taller, about 12 inches at the shoulder.
The first such partial example of this type of horse was found in England and another incomplete one was found in the southern U.S. in 1867. Other partial examples, never one as complete as Tynsky's, have been found in the Wasatch Range of Utah and in the Wind River Basin of Wyoming and a few other places.
These early horses also had large padded feet, similar to that of a modern dog, for walking on wet, marshy ground. But the tiny horses also had multiple hooves instead of claws. During the millions of years since that time, the multiple hooves or toes have either disappeared or evolved to form one hoof as on modern horses.
It was evident that both men knew a lot about what they had found and the satisfaction of a long and successful search showed on Tynsky's weathered face. But he explained he would still be out "digging fish" in the years to come regardless of whether or not he is able to sell "Dawn."
Date: 6/10/04
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