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Ages - Extant
Equids - Glossary - References
Matthew's Evolution
of the Horse
In 1907, J.W. Gidley was
the first to depict the family tree of the family Equidae as a branching
structure with the coexistence of different genera (MacFadden 1992). It
was William Dither Matthew, however, who became more known for his branching
phylogeny of Equidae (MacFadden 1992). Matthew's phylogeny (published in
1930), while branching, still centered on a main line leading from Hyracotherium
to Equus, with various side branches that he considered no more
than evolutionary mistakes, or dead-ends (Gould 1987).