The Dawn Horse or Eohippus

Abstract

Recently completed in the laboratory of vertebrate paleontology at the California Institute of Technology is the first free or open mount of a tiny early member of the horse family. The difficult task of preparing this specimen and of reconstructing missing parts was accomplished by William Otto, sculptor and preparator at the Institute. An innovation is the use of leucite in the supporting framework of the skeleton, giving a lightness and clarity of presentation rarely achieved in the preparation of such materials. While thousands of fragments of jaws and skulls, teeth, and parts of skeletons of Eohippus have been collected by a number of institutions, there are only three or four mounted skeletons of this animal in existence. With the exception of the present individual, the other two or three have been prepared on plaques or as half mounts in which, for the most part, only one-half of the body is shown.