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.

Transcript

00:00Researchers were ecstatic when, in 2018, landscapers unearthed the skeletal remains of a horse

00:06in a backyard in Lehigh, Utah.

00:09At the time, scientists thought the horse dated to the last ice age, because the bones

00:13were buried in sediment dating to about 16,000 years ago.

00:17But now, a new study shows they were way off—by a lot.

00:20It turns out this horse didn't live in the last ice age.

00:23Instead, radiocarbon dating shows its bones are no older than 340 years old.

00:29The team found that the horse lived sometime after 1680, but likely before Europeans permanently

00:35settled in the Great Salt Lake area in the mid-1800s.

00:38Despite this epic mistake, it's still an exciting find, the researchers said.

00:43An analysis of the horse's anatomy and DNA indicate that it was a domesticated horse

00:48likely raised, ridden, and cared for by the indigenous people.

00:53Horses have a long history in North America.

00:55They lived here from about 50 million to 10,000 years ago, disappearing about the same

01:00time as other large animals, including mammoths, short-faced bears, and giant sloths that went

01:06extinct at the end of the last ice age.

01:08It's likely that these big animals went extinct as they dealt with a combination of

01:12climate change and human interactions.

01:15However, horses were reintroduced to the Americas in the 16th century, when the Spaniards

01:20brought them over.

01:21Many indigenous people who lived in the Americas swiftly integrated horses into their cultures

01:25and economies, and that's how this horse fits into the picture.

01:29A genetic analysis showed that it was a domesticated horse, scientifically known as Equus caballus,

01:36that was raised by indigenous people in what is now Utah, possibly by the Ute or Shoshone

01:40cultures.

01:42The Lehigh horse shows that there is an incredible archaeological record out there of the early

01:47relationship between indigenous people and horses, a record that tells us things not

01:51written in any European histories, said study lead author William Taylor, a curator of archaeology

01:57at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.

02:01An analysis of this horse's bones showed that it was a female and about 12 years old

02:05when it died, meaning it was an older mare.

02:08The horse's spine had fractures indicative of horseback riding, meaning someone likely

02:12rode this horse bareback or with a soft saddle pad, and banged up and down on the horse's

02:17back while riding.

02:18The horse also had a number of maladies, including arthritis.

02:22So why keep around an old horse?

02:24The researcher said that it's possible that indigenous people cared for this mare because

02:28they wanted to breed her with stallions in the herd.