Small horses got smaller, big tapirs got bigger 47 million years ago

The former coalfield of Geiseltal in eastern Germany has yielded large numbers of exceptionally preserved fossil animals, giving palaeontologists a unique window into the evolution of mammals 47 million years ago. At that time—the middle Eocene—the Earth was much warmer and the area was a swampy subtropical forest whose inhabitants included ancestors of the horse, ancient tapirs, large terrestrial crocodiles, as well as giant tortoises, lizards and ground-dwelling birds. So rich are the Geiseltal finds that they give researchers an unprecedented high-resolution picture of evolutionary dynamics at the population level.

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