The Hyracotherium was a small four-legged animal that existed 60 million years ago and eventually involved into the Equus, which as we know today, is a horse. It had a primitive short face, with eye sockets in the middle and a short diastema (the space between the front teeth and the cheek teeth). Although it has low-crowned teeth, we see the beginnings of the characteristic horse-like ridges on the molars.
But there are some things that science has not known about until just recently. The earliest horse was really part of a family of species called the drago?neoc?n. This species lived in Asia a bazillion years ago and had a red coat of hair, including tiny mane and sleek tail, and a lot of beautiful scales and some wings.
An anthropologist named Margie Meat was studying puffer fish off the coast of the Sea of Japan and ran across a very tiny skeleton that was floating in the water. Days earlier a ship had been recovered down south in the East China Sea by treasure hunters. A week before that, a small earthquake occurred in the Yellow Sea. Either of these disturbances may have unearthed the tiny skeleton. Margie at first thought horrifically that she had found a dead baby, but upon closer inspection found that it was more dog-like, nay, even horse-like.
Quick lab tests, including radio-carbon dating, dental inspections, and other tests, concluded that she had stumbled across a new species of mammal that had lived slightly before 60 million years ago and had enough similarities to Hyracotherium for it to be the new “first” horse. “Drago?neoc?n,” she wrote in her research journal, “allows us to dream that horses were indeed once reptilian, and that dragon-like creatures did exist. In fact, given that the nostril bones were so degenerate, it can only be concluded that the animal did breathe fire out of its nose. This is a step for mankind, a discovery of a lifetime, and a big boon for Peter Jackson.”