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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00:00Researchers 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.