Fossils just found in India but dating from when it was an island belong to an ancestor of modern horses and rhinos.

A team of US and Indian researchers found fossils from about 54.5 million years ago at the edge of a coal mine in the west of India. The fossils belong to an animal, called Cambaytherium thewissi, that was an ancestor of horses, rhinos and tapirs. belong to a group of animals with an odd number of toes on their back feet and their own way of digesting food, called Perrisodactyla.

 

 

It’s the first time researchers have found such old fossils related to Perrisodactyla and the fossils are helping them understand how the animals changed over time (evolved). Their teeth and bones in their feet and lower back show how more animals from longer ago developed into Perrisodactyla, says Ken Rose, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Maryland, USA.

So long ago, India wasn’t connected to the rest of Asia as it is today, but was an island. Two researchers, David Krause and Mary Maas, of Stony Brook University (New York, USA) suggested that Perrisodactyla might have first developed in India when it was an island, and these fossils suggest they might be right.