The Myth of Horse Evolution

One important subject in the origin of mammals is the myth of the "evolution of the horse," also a topic to which evolutionist publications have devoted a considerable amount of space for a long time. This is a myth, because it is based on imagination rather than scientific findings.

Until recently, an imaginary sequence supposedly showing the evolution of the horse was advanced as the principal fossil evidence for the theory of evolution. Today, however, many evolutionists themselves frankly admit that the scenario of horse evolution is bankrupt. In 1980, a four-day symposium was held at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, with 150 evolutionists in attendance, to discuss the problems with the gradualistic evolutionary theory. In addressing this meeting, evolutionist Boyce Rensberger noted that the scenario of the evolution of the horse has no foundation in the fossil record, and that no evolutionary process has been observed that would account for the gradual evolution of horses:

The popularly told example of horse evolution, suggesting a gradual sequence of changes from four-toed fox-sized creatures living nearly 50 million years ago to today's much larger one-toed horse, has long been known to be wrong. Instead of gradual change, fossils of each intermediate species appear fully distinct, persist unchanged, and then become extinct. Transitional forms are unknown.152

While discussing this important dilemma in the scenario of the evolution of the horse in a particularly honest way, Rensberger brought the transitional form difficulty onto the agenda as the greatest difficulty of all.

Dr. Niles Eldredge, a curator at the American Museum in New York, , where "evolution of the horse" diagrams were on public display at that time on the ground floor of the museum, said the following about the exhibition:

There have been an awful lot of stories, some more imaginative than others, about what the nature of that history [of life] really is. The most famous example, still on exhibit downstairs, is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps fifty years ago. That has been presented as the literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that is lamentable, particularly when the people who propose those kinds of stories may themselves be aware of the speculative nature of some of that stuff.153

Then what is the basis for the scenario of the evolution of the horse? This scenario was formulated by means of the deceitful charts devised by the sequential arrangement of fossils of distinct species that lived at vastly different periods in India, South Africa, North America, and Europe, solely in accordance with the rich power of evolutionists' imaginations. More than 20 charts of the evolution of the horse, which by the way are totally different from each other, have been proposed by various researchers. Thus, it is obvious that evolutionists have reached no common agreement on these family trees. The only common feature in these arrangements is the belief that a dog-sized creature called Eohippus (Hyracotherium), which lived in the Eocene period 55 million years ago, was the ancestor of the horse. However, the fact is that Eohippus, which became extinct millions of years ago, is nearly identical to the hyrax, a small rabbit-like animal which still lives in Africa and has nothing whatsoever to do with the horse.154

The inconsistency of the theory of the evolution of the horse becomes increasingly apparent as more fossil findings are gathered. Fossils of modern horse species (Equus nevadensis and Equus occidentalis) have been discovered in the same layer asEohippus.155 This is an indication that the modern horse and its so-called ancestor lived at the same time.

The evolutionist science writer Gordon R. Taylor explains this little-acknowledged truth in his book The Great Evolution Mystery:

But perhaps the most serious weakness of Darwinism is the failure of paleontologists to find convincing phylogenies or sequences of organisms demonstrating major evolutionary change... The horse is often cited as the only fully worked-out example. But the fact is that the line from Eohippus to Equus is very erratic. It is alleged to show a continual increase in size, but the truth is that some variants were smaller than Eohippus, not larger. Specimens from different sources can be brought together in a convincing-looking sequence, but there is no evidence that they were actually ranged in this order in time.156

All these facts are strong evidence that the charts of horse evolution, which are presented as one of the most solid pieces of evidence for Darwinism, are nothing but fantastic and implausible fairy tales. Like other species, horses, too, came into existence without ancestors in the evolutionary sense.

152 Boyce Rensberger, Houston Chronicle, November 5, 1980, p. 15. (emphasis added)
153 Niles Eldgridge, quoted in Darwin's Enigma by Luther D. Sunderland (Santee, CA, Master Books, 1988), p. 78.
154 Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong, New American Library, New York, 1982, pp. 16-17, 19.
155 Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong, New American Library, New York, 1982, pp. 16-17, 19.
156 Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery, Abacus, Sphere Books, London, 1984, p. 230. (emphasis added)