THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



beside related fossil forms, and special synoptic exhibits will illus- 

 trate the structure and evolution of the most important groups. 



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- 



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