Olivka

This small animal from the American Eocene is named Olivka, after the fossil-finding brothers Mark and Mike Oliver. Not that the Olivers were looking for it on purpose-they were after the fish prints for which the Green River Formation is famous. But on that spring day in 2015, they hit the jackpot.

❇ The perfectly preserved skeleton belonged to a creature the size of a house cat and had hooves on its toes. It took eight weeks of painstaking work to recover it.

Specialists determined that Olivia belonged to the genus Sifrhippus, i.e. it is the oldest ancestor of horses to date.

❇ Only two complete skeletons of these animals are known, both originating from Green River and are 48 million years old. The first was found in 2005, but is not available for study by scientists because it is stored by a private collector in a safe deposit box, but Olivia will help paleontologists better understand the early evolution of equids

Sourse:V. K.