PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Peter D. Heintzman
AU  - Grant D. Zazula
AU  - Ross D.E. MacPhee
AU  - Eric Scott
AU  - James A. Cahill
AU  - Brianna K. McHorse
AU  - Joshua D. Kapp
AU  - Mathias Stiller
AU  - Matthew J. Wooller
AU  - Ludovic Orlando
AU  - John R. Southon
AU  - Duane G. Froese
AU  - Beth Shapiro
TI  - A new genus of horse from Pleistocene North America
AID  - 10.1101/154963
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 154963
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/24/154963.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/24/154963.full
AB  - The extinct “New World stilt-legged”, or NWSL, equids constitute a perplexing group of Pleistocene horses endemic to North America. Their slender distal limb bones resemble those of Asiatic asses, such as the Persian onager. Previous palaeogenetic studies, however, have suggested a closer relationship to caballine horses than to Asiatic asses. Here, we report complete mitochondrial and partial nuclear genomes from NWSL equids from across their geographic range. Although multiple NWSL equid species have been named, our palaeogenomic and morphometric analyses support the idea that there was only a single species of middle to late Pleistocene NWSL equid, and demonstrate that it falls outside of crown group Equus. We therefore propose a new genus, Haringtonhippus, for the sole species H. francisci. Our combined genomic and phenomic approach to resolving the systematics of extinct megafauna will allow for an improved understanding of the full extent of the terminal Pleistocene extinction event.