Ancient horse bones tell story behind the Tibetan plateau   MSNBC - April 24, 2012
A newly discovered skeleton from an ancient three-toed horse not only provides information about ancient Tibetan wildlife, but it also sheds light on the habitat and elevation of Tibet nearly 5 million years ago. This area of the world, called the Tibetan plateau, is the youngest and highest plateau on Earth, its average elevation exceeding 14,800 feet (4,500 meters), but researchers don't know exactly when this happened. Some researchers think that 5 million years ago, the plateau was once much higher than it is today, but others think it was much lower.

Ancient horses' spotted history reflected in cave art   BBC - November 7, 2011
Scientists have found evidence that leopard-spotted horses roamed Europe 25,000 years ago alongside humans. Until now, studies had only recovered the DNA of black and brown colored coats from fossil specimens. The result suggests that the dappled horses depicted in European cave art were inspired by real life, and are less symbolic than previously thought.

Saudi find shows horses used 9,000 years ago   PhysOrg - August 25, 2011
Saudi Arabia has found traces of a civilization that was domesticating horses about 9,000 years ago, 4,000 years earlier than previously thought, the kingdom said.

Horses: Finding the First Horse Whisperers   Live Science - November 27, 2009

May 3, 2001 - Calgary News

Canadian scientists have uncovered what they say is the first unequivocal evidence that prehistoric North Americans hunted and butchered now-extinct horses. University of Calgary scientists discovered the pony-sized horses while excavating the dry bed of the St. Mary Reservoir in southern Alberta. The site is one of the richest archeological fields in North America. It is now protected under the Alberta Historical Resources Act. The discovery adds weight to the theory that overhunting played a major role in the extinction of North American horses about 10,000 years ago.

The University of Calgary team also found footprints of woolly mammoths and a now-extinct North American camel. The site provides "an astonishingly detailed picture of what the New World was like during the late Pleistocene Era," said University of Calgary archeologist Dr. Brian Kooyman.

The link between the Equus conversidens horse and human hunters was established after team members unearthed a skeleton of an extinct horse at the site. Several of the horse's vertebrae were smashed and it had what appeared to be butcher marks on a number of its bones.

Some 500 metres from the skeleton, they also discovered several Clovis spearheads. Protein residue testing and examination of the spearheads confirmed the artifacts had been used to hunt the extinct horse. Although archaeologists have long suspected the "big game" hunters of the Clovis period (9000-10000 BC) of hunting the horses, there has been little evidence to support this theory until now. Spanish Conquistadors reintroduced horses to the Americas during the 16th century.