Talk:Evolution of the horse

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This article needs images and diagrams. Alexander 007 1 July 2005 23:05 (UTC)

I agree. Got any? --DanielCD 2 July 2005 14:03 (UTC)

Nope. Alexander 007 00:53, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I've drawn one. :-D -- Jerry Crimson Mann 13:55, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Emergence of the 'Genuine' horse?! 2 50 million years ago? 3 Structure 4 Name change?

[edit] Emergence of the 'Genuine' horse?!

The genuine horse? Is this term a scientific one, or is it just someone being ignorant and meaning the modern-day horse? The Singing Badger 22:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 50 million years ago?

Was anybody here actually around 50 million years who could tell me if horses really 'evolved' from those stubby things, or if there just used to be more species of horses around back then, that aren't around now? There isn't exactly a complete fossil record, I always found this sort of speculation silly--Horse master 03:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

This sort of nonsense belongs in Intelligent Design. Garglebutt / (talk) 04:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I just don't think we should go around presupposing things that aren't certian--Horse master 04:37, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

So any history older than the oldest person alive is speculation? Now that's silly. Garglebutt / (talk) 04:39, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

"Moved American Revolution to Alleged American Revolution: -compromise for NPOV" --Aquillion 14:53, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I do not think that this is a place to discuss objections against evolution. KimvdLinde 15:04, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Structure

I was thinking a bit about the structure of this article, and I think that this article should describe the broad overview, and preferably not deal with seperate species. There are articles for most of the seperate species, and that are much better places to deal with those. That would lead to a more concise article, and is easier to structure to describe the big line. What are the opinions of other about this? -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 04:10, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

That's a great idea, go for it! The Singing Badger 09:29, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Note that the evolution of the horse is not a "big line", it is a "big bush", with numerous branching-off points along the way that end in dead ends. Also note that the article currently does not have separate sections for any species: its sections, such as Hyracotherium and Equus, refer to biological genera, not "species" per se. However, I understand your gist, and I agree that most individual equid genera should not have sections in this article: Orohippus, Epihippus, Kalobatippus, and Pliohippus are all great candidates for merging into larger sections, for example. On the other hand, I must disagree with your suggestion that we not have separate sections for any genera: to not have sections for Equus, or Mesohippus, or Merychippus, for example, seems bizarre to me, considering how broadly important they are (though the Merychippus section still needs major expansion: I haven't gotten to it yet in my rewrite and expansion of the article, so most of the important information about the evolutionary significance of Merychippus is still absent).

However, it doesn't hurt to experiment with new ideas, so feel free to attempt whatever restructuring you see fit. I recently attempted (briefly) a few possible reorganizations of the article, such as a periodal one, but haven't implemented any large-scale attempts yet.

A caveat: Although I fully support any attempts to remove trivial, non-relevant information (of which there are certainly at least a few examples) from this article to their appropriate specific articles, I am concerned with any attempts to remove significant information from this page that is based on exaggerated worries over page size, rather than on specific analysis of what information is or isn't significant to the evolution of the horse. If you are more interested in making this article brief than in making it a comprehensive source of useful and relevant information on the topic in question, then I have no interest in further improving the article. No point, if the effort will be wasted when we supercompress the page into a noninformative blurb accompanied by "see also" links. Wikipedia is not paper: we are bound by size constraints only in terms of whatever dimensions will make the information most accessible to readers.

With that in mind, feel free to make your changes! The easiest way to discuss the various options is to see them presented to us so we can determine whether or not they work in practice, not in theory. -Silence 09:47, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Apparently, I was not clear. I used the big line as in the overall picture. My aim for a concise articles is not motivated by the size of the article, but by the desire to lead people to the corner of this article, the evolution of the horse. At current, the article reads as a collection of species/genus descriptions, with limited synthesis. The section on Hyracotherium at this page is larger than the article on this genus Hyracotherium, and that does not make sense to me. Anyway, I will first work on all the genus/species articles and bring those up to par before doing a larger scale restructering here. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 14:20, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name change?

How about "evolution of horses"? "The horse" with the definite article suggests there is something singular about what a horse is: a Platonic ideal, if you will.

This is of course not true: there are many horses (donkeys, zebras, as well as all the extinct horses): it is, after all, a "big bush" as someone else put it. The notion of a linear progress upward towards the "genuine" horse was actually cited in by several books I've read as an example of past misunderstandings about evolution. --Saforrest 02:19, 5 December 2006 (UTC)