Читать книгу Horse Genetics - Ernest Bailey - Страница 22

So, what were the origins of the modern domestic horse? A comprehensive study by Fages and co-workers (2019) entailed DNA sequencing and comparison of modern horses and archeological remains of horses from around Europe and Asia. They found evidence for the existence of four (possibly five) prehistoric species of horse. Today, only two species of horse remain, Equus przewalski and Equus caballus. One of the extinct lines was based on samples from Siberia while the other was based on samples from the Iberian Peninsula. These four horse species diverged from a common horse ancestor within the last 1 million years with limited gene flow between them before the Siberian and Iberian horses became extinct probably tens of thousands of years ago. The DNA sequences of the Iberian and Siberian horses are sufficiently dissimilar to that of the modern domestic horse that we do not believe the Siberian or Iberian horses contributed significantly to the modern domestic horses. The best candidate for origin of the modern horse may be from somewhere in central Eurasia.