Tarpan Tarpan Spleenwort Category="Equids"Category="Extinct animals"
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TarpanConservation status: Extinct (1875)
[image]
1841 drawing
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Mammalia
Order:Perissodactyla
Family:Equidae
Genus:Equus
Species:E. ferus
Binomial name
Equus ferus
Boddaert, 1785

The Tarpan, Equus ferus, was the Eurasian wild Horse. The last specimen of this species died in a Moscow zoo in 1875.

Polish farmers often crossed the tarpan with their domestic horses. The result was a small horse breed, the Konik. Such animals similar to the Tarpan are now used like the Heck cattle to breed back the Tarpan and to fill in the niche that was left vacant by their extinction.

Taxonomic history

The Tarpan was first described by Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1774; he had seen the animals in 1769 in the region of Bobrovsk, near Voronezh. In 1784 Pieter Boddaert named the species Equus ferus, referring to Gmelin's description. Unaware of Boddaert's name, Otto Antonius published the name Equus gmelini in 1912, again referring to Gmelin's description. Since Antonius' name refers to the same description as Boddaert's it is a junior objective synonym.

It is now thought that the domesticated Horse, named Equus caballus by Linnaeus in 1758, is descended from the Tarpan; indeed, many taxonomists consider them to belong to the same species. By a strict application of the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the Tarpan ought to be named E. caballus, or if considered a subspecies, E. caballus ferus. However, biologists have generally ignored the letter of the rule and used E. ferus for the Tarpan to avoid confusion with its domesticated cousins.

In 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature "conserved the usage of 17 specific names based on wild species, which are pre-dated by or contemporary with those based on domestic forms", confirming E. ferus for the Tarpan.[:Tarpan}}#endnote_ICZNOpinion2027]

References

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