In The Family Tree

We know that the WOOLLY MAMMOTH was the huge, hairy ancestor of our elephant and that the WOOLLY RHINOCEROS was the forerunner of the rhino. But where did some of our other modern mammals come from?

Hyracotherium or Eohippus (meaning "dawn horse") was the earliest-known horse. It was the size of a tiny dog, being only 60 cm long and 20 cm high at the shoulder.

This primitive horse had four hoofed toes on the front feet and three hoofed toes on each hind foot. It had a long skull with 44 long-crowned teeth. It was a grazing herbivore that ate soft leaves and plant shoots.

Eohippus lived during the early Eocene Epoch, about 50 million years ago. It lived in the Northern Hemisphere (in Asia, Europe and North America). The first fossils of this tiny horse were found in England by the famous palaeontologist Richard Owen in 1841.

Find a picture of this ancient horse and draw it in the first square. Then make a flow chart to show how this horse may have evolved to become the horse as we know it today. Use sources such as: www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/mammals/index.shtml

Extra: Imagine that humans of today are merely the ancestors of highly developed beings that
are going to exist 100 000 years from now. What special features and skills will humans
have in the future? On the back of this page, draw a chart to show how we evolve into
these super-beings.