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Science 24 June 1983:
Vol. 220. no. 4604, pp. 1403 - 1404
DOI: 10.1126/science.220.4604.1403
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Articles

Ecology and Catastrophic Mortality in Wild Horses: Implications for Interpreting Fossil Assemblages

JOEL BERGER 1

1 Conservation and Research Center, Smithsonian Institution, Front Royal, Virginia 22630

The identities, sexes, and reproductive status of groups of wild horses (Equus caballus) living in the Great Basin Desert of North America were known prior to their deaths on ridgelines. Another group of very young horses died on a quagmire. Snow accumulation or drought was apparently responsible for the mass deaths. These data have implications for reconstructing some aspects of the social structure of fossil mammals on the basis of skewed sex or age ratios in bone assemblages.

Submitted on September 17, 1982
Revised on December 17, 1982


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Sexual dimorphism and paleoecology in Teleoceras, a North American Miocene rhinoceros.
(2000)
Paleobiology 26, 689-706


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)