A centuries-old horse tooth might be the last piece in the genetic puzzle of Assateague's horses
CNN
The unexpected discovery of a 16th-century horse tooth in modern-day Haiti has provided credence for an age-old folk story about the origin of feral horses on an island off Maryland and Virginia.
The famous wild Chincoteague ponies have lived for centuries on Assateague Island, a barrier island on the Atlantic coast. But no one is quite sure how they got there. A 1947 children's book inspired by local legend, "Misty of Chincoteague," suggests that the ponies are the descendants of Spanish horses who swam to the island after a Spanish ship wrecked off the coast of Virginia, reverting to a feral state over the years.
But research published in PLoS ONE by scientists from the Florida Museum of Natural History on July 22 provides new scientific support for the theory based on the discovery of the oldest known DNA from a domesticated horse in the Americas.
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