Ancient Bones Reveal Insights Into Swiss Wild Horse Population

Researchers from the University of Basel have, for the first time, studied how regional environmental changes influenced the populations of wild horses in Switzerland 25,000 years ago. Their results show: Contrary to the wild horses in the Eurasian steppe; the Swiss population grew considerably after the end of the last Ice Age. The journal Plos One has published the results. The horse was domesticated around 5,500 years in the Central Asian steppe in Kazakhstan. Its wild ancestors went extinct at the beginning of the 20th century. Although there still are wild horses such as the Przewalski horse, they are not ancestors to the domestic horse. Archaeological and paleontological remains are therefore the only sources to study the history of wild horses.