4 Vote!

MtDNA tests trace all modern horses back to single ancestor 140,000 years ago

(PhysOrg.com) -- For many years archeologists and other scientists have debated the origins of the domesticated horse. Nailing down a time frame is important because many historians view the relationship between man and horse as one of the most important in the development of our species. Horses allowed early people to hunt for faster prey, to wander farther than before and to create much bigger farms due to pulling plows. Now, new evidence has come to light suggesting that all modern horses, which are believed to have been domesticated approximately 10,000 years ago, descended from one mare around 140,000 years ago. The new evidence comes from a team made up of international researchers who, as they describe in their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, say that DNA evidence shows that the horse subsequently diverged into 18 different genetic lines, suggesting that domestication occurred independently in many places throughout the world....

MtDNA tests trace all modern horses back to single ancestor 140,000 years ago

Related articles:

Search

Most Popular