Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 173, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1911 — HAPPENINGS IN THE CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HAPPENINGS IN THE CITIES

Find Gotham Horse 4,000 Years Old

NEW YORK.—The skull of a hipparion gracile, a fossil horse somewhat smaller than the Asiatic ass, which lived in the pliocene period, 4,000 years ago, and which geologists say was the ancestor of the modern ihorse, was unearthed at Park and Duane streets by workmen excavating for the new Brooklyn-New York subway loop. The bones were found at sea level, 22 feet down, and were burled in a stratum of solidified black swamp mud. The discovery is regarded as unusual, since never before has the skeleton of an extinct member of the horse family been found so far north as this state. Father L. J. Evers, pastor of St. .Andrew’s church, Wtko formerly was an instructor in zoology and geology in Notre Dame university, in Indiana, Identified the bones, fitted them together and proved they belonged to the framework of a hipparion which reamed Manhattan island long before the day of man.

• -VyA ' s ’V , • When the skull had been fitted together it was seen that the animal had two full sets of teeth/ One set was at the mouth opening, made up of sharp incisors, which the modern horse does not have, and the other set was farther back in the mouth, consisting of more than twenty-two big, flat molars in each Jaw. In the front set there arp about nine te6th to each jaw, upper and lower. Between the two sets is an open space in the mouth, about five inches long. The skull, from lips to crown, measures 23 inches, whereas the average * length of the head of a modern horse is five inches longer. The teeth and body framework of the skull were almost perfectly preserved, and the jaws fitted together to a nicety. “I don’t think t£ere is any doubt those bones belonged to a hipparion,” said Father Evers. “I wouldn’t say that If I had not been, before I entered the priesthood, a student and teacher of geology. The discovery really is important, because the hipparion, the great-granddaddy of all horses, never has been unearthed so far north before. Usually its bones have been found in the upper miocene rocks of North America, in the southern part of the United States, and in the pliocene deposits of northern Africa, Asia and Europe.”