Horse Lineage to Clydesdales

Throughout history the use of horses for not only motility and trade routes but also as an offence for battle, a handy force in agricultural, and for sport and riding pleasure has been seen around the world’s countries in many different ways. From these hundreds of registered breeds of horses, ponies, and drafts comes a history unique to every breed that resides in the breeds own homelands. However, even the different species of horses in all shapes and sizes has a common ancestor that unites the characteristics that define the horses globally. Taking the perceived body structure from this prehistoric ancestor through bones and fossil remains, it is hard to see the pathway of adaptations that the horse has taken to become the lovable pintos and ponies that live in our world today. Even more so is that this ancestor had ‘given birth’ to the draft horses, more than five times their size.
The earliest horse recorded is Eohippus, as stated by The Encyclopedia of the Horse by Elwyn Hartley Edwards (1994), the Dawn Horse that roamed the Americas as a browser some 60 million years ago, even before the dawn of mankind. Very unlike the modern day horses, Eohippus was small, only 14 inches tall, and was a four toed animal thought to look more deer like, with light brown coloring, and spots covering its coat. To combat changing habitat and atmosphere’s the species grew slowly; evolving into Mesohippus, a three toed ancestor that lived 35 to 40 million years ago. This ancestor was relatively bigger, being about 18 inches tall, and had the beginnings of premolar or incisor teeth. Therefore Mesohippus could live off of a greater variety of foliage, though this species is still classified as browsers. These loss of toes, are thought to be an adaption to the change of ground conditions of through the time periods, as the glaciers moved in the ground became firmer, and a new body structures were needed.
Between Mesohippus and the next more important ancestor the species grew...