A recent article has been published that will be important for the topic of “horses” in the Book of Mormon:
Wade Miller, Gilberto
Pérez-Roldán, Jim I. Mead, Rosario Gómez-Núñez, Jorge Madrazo-Fanti, and Isaí
Ortiz-Pérez, "Post-Pleistocene
Horses (Equus) from México," The Texas Journal of Science 74,
no. 1 (2022) (PDF)
Abstract
For more than a century many paleontologists, biologists,
paleoecologists, and archaeologists have contended that Equus species
(American horse) became extinct on the North American continent by about 13,000
calibrated years BP – all part of the Late Pleistocene (Ice Age) extinction
event. The paleontological project presented here that focuses on Equus from
Rancho Carabanchel, San Luis Potosí, México became chronologically intriguing
to us in having the horse consistently radiometrically dating into the
Holocene, well beyond the presumed extinction event. Our approach to this
observation was to conduct successive radiocarbon dates (n=19) tied as closely
as possible to fossil remains and to stratigraphic units. The remains of the
extant horse, Equus caballus, were recovered only in the
upper-most Unit I while the extinct Equus cf. mexicanus, E. cf. conversidens, and E. cf. tau were
recovered from the underlying Units II – VI of the late Holocene to
approximately 45,000 calibrated years ago. We discuss how our data adds to the
growing information which implies that horses may have persisted in this region
of México well after the classical Late Pleistocene extinction event. Our
conclusions may well illustrate that the extinction episode was actually a
process lasting well into the Holocene and was not the event that many
paleoecologists and archaeologist envision.
My thanks to my friend Spencer Kraus for making me aware of this article.
