Ice Age Horse Not What We Thought
The skeletal remains of a horse unearthed in Utah thought to date to the last ice age are actually much younger.
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00:00 Researchers were ecstatic when, in 2018, landscapers unearthed the skeletal remains of a horse
00:06 in a backyard in Lehigh, Utah.
00:09 At the time, scientists thought the horse dated to the last ice age, because the bones
00:13 were buried in sediment dating to about 16,000 years ago.
00:16 But now, a new study shows they were way off.
00:19 By a lot.
00:20 It turns out this horse didn't live in the last ice age.
00:23 Instead, radiocarbon dating shows its bones are no older than 340 years old.
00:29 The team found that the horse lived sometime after 1680, but likely before Europeans permanently
00:35 settled in the Great Salt Lake area in the mid-1800s.
00:38 Despite this "epic" mistake, it's still an exciting find, the researchers said.
00:43 An analysis of the horse's anatomy and DNA indicate that it was a domesticated horse
00:48 likely raised, ridden, and cared for by the indigenous people.
00:53 Horses have a long history in North America.
00:55 They lived here from about 50 million to 10,000 years ago, disappearing about the same time
01:00 as other large animals, including mammoths, short-faced bears, and giant sloths that went
01:06 extinct at the end of the last ice age.
01:08 It's likely that these big animals went extinct as they dealt with a combination of climate
01:12 change and human interactions.
01:14 However, horses were reintroduced to the Americas in the 16th century, when the Spaniards brought
01:20 them over.
01:21 Many indigenous people who lived in the Americas swiftly integrated horses into their cultures
01:25 and economies.
01:26 And that's how this horse fits into the picture.
01:29 A genetic analysis showed that it was a domesticated horse, scientifically known as Equus caballus,
01:36 that was raised by indigenous people in what is now Utah, possibly by the Ute or Shoshone
01:40 cultures.
01:42 The Lehigh horse shows that there is an incredible archaeological record out there of the early
01:47 relationship between indigenous people and horses, a record that tells us things not
01:51 written in any European histories, said study lead author William Taylor, a curator of archaeology
01:57 at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.
02:00 An analysis of this horse's bones showed that it was a female and about 12 years old when
02:05 it died, meaning it was an older mare.
02:08 The horse's spine had fractures indicative of horseback riding, meaning someone likely
02:12 rode this horse bareback or with a soft saddle pad, and banged up and down on the horse's
02:17 back while riding.
02:18 The horse also had a number of maladies, including arthritis.
02:22 So why keep around an old horse?
02:24 The researcher said that it's possible that indigenous people cared for this mare because
02:28 they wanted to breed her with stallions in the herd.
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