page_title: Tarpan
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Tarpan / History
caption_attribution_description: Inauguré en 1898, la galerie de Paléontologie et d’anatomie comparée a été voulue par les professeurs Albert Gaudry et George Pouchet. Le nouveau bâtiment a ainsi abrité des collections venant de plusieurs laboratoires, ou collections. Son originalité, à l’époque, tenait au fait que ce musée n’exposait pas toute les collections qu’il possédait. Le conservateur opérait donc une sélection qu’il présentait au public. Ce mode de présentation a depuis été adopté par tous les musées contemporains.
context_page_description: The tarpan, also known as Eurasian wild horse, was a subspecies of wild horse. It is now extinct. The last individual believed to be of this subspecies died in captivity in the Russian Empire during 1909, although some sources claim that it was not a genuine wild horse due to its resemblance to domesticated horses.
  Beginning in the 1930s, several attempts were made to develop horses that looked like tarpans through selective breeding, called "breeding back" by advocates. The breeds that resulted included the Heck horse, the Hegardt or Stroebel's horse, and a derivation of the Konik breed, all of which have a primitive appearance, particularly in having the grullo coat colour. Some of these horses are now commercially promoted as "tarpans". However, those who study the history of the ancient wild horse assert that the word "tarpan" describes only the true wild horse.
context_section_description: Wild horses have been present in Europe since the Pleistocene and ranged from southern France and Spain east to central Russia. There are cave drawings of primitive predomestication horses at Lascaux, France and in Cave of Altamira, Spain, as well as artifacts believed to show the species in southern Russia, where a horse of this type was domesticated around 3000 BCE.  Equus ferus had a continuous range from western Europe to Alaska; historic material suggests wild horses lived in most parts of Holocene Europe and the Eurasian steppe, except for parts of Scandinavia, Iceland and Ireland.
caption: Replica of a horse painting from a cave in Lascaux
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