ABSTRACTS
Jerry Bergman
The “horse series” icon of evolution was one of the most commonly cited “proofs” of evolution for over 150 years (Janis, 2008, p. 251). Due to new research and newer discoveries, the popular horse series diagram used in many science textbooks to document straight-line (orthogenetic) horse evolution is now widely acknowledged as inaccurate. It is now recognized that the fossil record documents only that an enormous amount of morphological variety exists in horses, not their gradual evolution from a common ancestor (see Figure 1). Although gradual Darwinian evolution has been rejected, horse evolution has been revised in an attempt to document a scenario more similar to Gould’s Punctuated Equilibrium theory and/or Mayr’s saltation theory.