Yunnan horse
The Yunnan horse (Equus yunnanensis) was a small, extinct horse that lived in East Asia during the ice age (the Pleistocene). It likely grazed on open grasslands and was about the size of a modern Przewalski’s horse.
It was first described by paleontologist Edwin H. Colbert from dental fossils collected by Walter W. Granger in the Ma Kai Valley, northern Yunnan, near Ma Kai in Guangnan County, during the Central Asiatic Expeditions of the American Museum of Natural History in 1926–1927. In the Ma Kai deposits, these fossils were the most common type of animal found.
Colbert thought the Yunnan horse was almost identical to a horse represented by fossils from the Upper Irrawaddy sediments of Myanmar described by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, suggesting they might be the same species.
Some authors have called it a stenonine horse, meaning it was probably only distantly related to true horses and more closely related to zebras and asses.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 12:03 (CET).