Horse "Evolution"?

Evolution of the Horse
In the 1870’s, the paleontologist O.C. Marsh published a description of newly discovered horse fossils from North America. At the time, very few transitional fossils were known, apart from Archeopteryx. The sequence of horse fossils that Marsh described (and that T.H. Huxley popularized) was a striking example of evolution taking place in a single lineage. Here, one could see the fossil species “Eohippus” transformed into an almost totally different-looking (and very familiar) descendent, Equus, through a series of clear intermediates. Biologists and interested laypeople were justifiably excited. Some years later, the American Museum of Natural History assembled a famous exhibit of these fossil horses, designed to show gradual evolution from “Eohippus” (now called Hyracotherium) to modern Equus. Such exhibits focussed attention on the horse family not only as evidence for evolution per se, but also specifically as a model of gradual, straight-line evolution, with Equus being the “goal” of equine evolution. This story of the horse family was soon included in all biology textbooks.