Moropus
| Moropus | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Skeleton of Moropus in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Oligocene to Miocene | ||||||||||||
| 30.8 to 13.6 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Moropus | ||||||||||||
| J. Leidy , 1873 | ||||||||||||
Moropus ("slow foot") is an extinct genus of mammals; it is closely related to Chalicotherium and together with it forms an unusual group of odd ungulates .
While horses , tapirs and rhinos , the representatives of the odd-toed ungulates still alive today, have hooves on their legs, Moropus and Chalicotherium had large claws on their toes. This is also indicated by the literal translation of the name of the family: "Horses with claws". Moropus was larger than our horses today, but had a similar shape. However, the front legs were longer than the rear legs so that the back line sloped backwards. Therefore Moropus could not run fast . The claw on each toe was withdrawn like a cat while running. What the claws were used for is unclear; The animals may have used it to dig roots out of the ground, or perhaps they sat up on their hind legs and tore leaves and twigs from the trees.
literature
- Michael Benton : Animals of the past from A to Z. Ars-Edition, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-7607-4553-9 .
Web links
- The Paleobiology Database Moropus