Yukon Horse

The Yukon horse, Equus lambei, is an extinct species of horse that ranged across North America until about 10,000 years ago. Fossils from the Yukon show a small, slender caballoid horse about 4 feet (1.2 metres) tall with a broad skull, and DNA studies place it close to the living wild and domestic horses, much like the extinct tarpan and Przewalski's horse. It was one of the most common ice-age animals of the steppe-like grasslands of Eastern Beringia, living alongside steppe bison, woolly mammoths and caribou. It grazed on grasses, sedges and flowering plants, and lived in family herds of four to ten mares with their young and one stallion, with bachelor males in separate groups. A partial carcass about 26,280 years old is on display at the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre in Whitehorse.