Step back in time, three to four million years, and imagine a place were zebra-like horses, ground sloths, mastodons, and other amazing creatures roamed. Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument is filled with fossil evidence of their existence in the 600 foot bluffs you see along the Snake River. In 1988, Congress established this 4,394 acre monument to preserve deposits of these Pliocene Epoch fossils. With continued research, we may learn the answer to the commonly asked question: What happened to these creatures?
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Paleontologists - scientists who study fossils - first excavated the Hagerman Horse (Equus simplicidens) and many other fossils in 1929 and during the 1930s.
An artist's rendering of the Hagerman Horse skeleton (top), its bones with flesh (middle), and how it may have looked (bottom). Scientists believe that it may have looked similar to the modern-day zebra.
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