Customer Reviews

Fossil Horses: Systematics, Paleobiology, and Evolution of the Family Equidae

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I'm a novice trying to understand the incredibly complex history, 58 million years, of the horse. I went on a dig and had the fun of finding bones and teeth from Miocene thru Pleistocene horses. I had a lot of questions after I got home about various issues raised by what we found. This book answered them and more. It's a real scientist's book, not a coffee table book, so it takes some concentrated reading, but I learned things that allowed me to go the natural history museum and perceive the fine points in the display. There were interesting asides also about the perspectives of scientists from the last few centuries, and earlier graphics to compare to new ones illustrating how the understanding of evolution has changed over the years. I'm going on another dig and this time I may know what I'm looking at.

The horse is often cited as one of the shining examples of evolution. It is even more often cited by CreationISTs and Intelligent Design proponents as an example of the folly of "evolutionists". CreationISTs consistently misquote, misreprensent and fabricate their arguments about horse evolution.

MacFadden's book is not strictly about the evolution of horses. Individual specimens are not cited, measurements are not provided, and character matrices are absent. Strictly speaking, it is a book about evolution, which just happens to use the author's extensive knowledge of fossil horses as its exemplars.

MacFadden discusses the nature of paleontology and the nature of fossils. He talks about how we erect a chronological structure for our fossils. He explicates various evolutionary processes, including variation, speciation and extinction. Functional morphology, population dynamics, ecology - all are described in terms which the non-specialist can appreciate, and are illustrated using the fossil record of horses.

For those who struggle daily against the incursion of religion into the science classroom, I cannot imagine a better preparation than a careful reading of this book. For anyone interested in learning just what a paleontologist does it provides a wide-based introduction. High school students will find it fascinating; it could be used as an excellent text for a college level course in evolutionary biology, and vertebrate paleontologists will find it a welcome state-of-the-art summary of what we know about the evolution of the horse.

I got this book brand new for 50 pence as apparently the book had no buyers.

For 10,000 years human civilization depended on horses and unsurprisingly horse evolution was a hot scientific topic at a time when people had no faster means of personal transport. History and its emperors are littered with tales of the horse and the equine symbollism in war and heroism is still with us. Given such a magical subject McFadden's book represents a somewhat staid academic account in the style of a scientific paper. Peppered with many references McFadden treats the reader like an academic used to such presentation and fails to enliven his topic. He touches all too briefly on the cultural importance of the horse and the book lacks any decent illustrations save several charts and technical drawings.

McFadden has certainly put in a great deal of hard work and covers many topics from the history of the study of horse evolution to geneology, geological time and the work he and his co-workers have produced. The book is too specific on the Equidae and does not deal adequately with recently extinct members of this family like the quagga and prehistoric species. Nor does it explain clearly why horses may have dissapeared from the Americas. Parts of the book, e.g., the limb locking mechanism were for me hard to follow. The book is afraid of speculation.

It provides ample materials and references to the student and to the paleontologist and is a good textbook. It fails to dramatise its subject and to attract a "lay audience". We are not really treated to what makes horses so special but to its credit it represents a highly authoritative and up to (its) date digest.

This is the book that I recommend highly to our journal readers. I've been using it for reference myself since it was published. Information about the evolution of the horse's foot is my area of interest, so I cannot really comment on other aspects of the book. We cite this book frequently and I am amazed at how many people (and academics) in the horse field still don't know about it. I'm trying to change that!

Fran Jurga
Hoofcare & Lameness: Journal of Equine Foot Science