Crossword clues for mesohippus
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Mesohippus \Mes`o*hip"pus\, n. [NL., fr. Gr. me`sos middle + ? a horse.] (Paleon.) An extinct mammal of the Horse family, but not larger than a sheep, and having three toes on each foot.
WordNet
n. North American 3-toed Oligocene animal; probably not directly ancestral to modern horses
Wikipedia
Mesohippus ( Greek: μεσο/meso meaning "middle" and ιππος/hippos meaning "horse") is an extinct genus of early horse. It lived some 30 to 40 million years ago from the Middle Eocene to the Early Oligocene. Like many fossil horses, Mesohippus was common in North America.
Usage examples of "mesohippus".
A group of new scholars is pushing the line that the ancestors of our horse developed in America only as far as mesohippus, which then emigrated to Asia, where it developed into the horse proper, in the form of the Appaloosa, which thus becomes the great ancestor of subsequent breeds.
But what gained greatest attention, especially from ranchers in the west, was his discovery in subsequent years of handsome skeletons of four of the progenitors of the horse: eohippus, mesohippus, miohippus and the crucial, determinative merychippus.