 There has been much debate over the status of the quagga in relation to the plains zebra. It is poorly represented in the fossil record, and the identification of these fossils is uncertain, as they were collected at a time when the name quagga referred to all zebras. Fossil skulls of Equus mauritanicus from Algeria have been claimed to show affinities with the quagga and the plains zebra, but they may be too badly damaged to allow definite conclusions to be drawn from them. Quaggas have also been identified in cave art attributed to the San. Reginald Innes Pocock was perhaps the first to suggest that the quagga was a subspecies of plains zebra in 1902. As the quagga was scientifically described and named before the plains zebra, the trinomial name for the quagga becomes E. quagga quagga under this scheme, and the other subspecies of plains zebra are placed under E. quagga as well.
