One of the more famous events in the development of evolutionary biology was the shift from the linear notion of horse evolution proposed by E. D. Cope O. C. Marsh and T. H. Huxley in the 19th century to the "bushy" model of horse evolution in the middle of the 20th. But not all branches of the bush were found.
Now, an eight year old boy fossil hunting with his parents in California Nevada has found some crucial fossils of small three toed horse ancestors. I hope he ends up doing more of this...
UPDATE: Josh Rosenau has a corrected and expanded post on this. He actually asked an expert, which runs counter to the Basic Philosophy of Blogging...
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Sorry to quibble on your parade, but wasn't it O.C. Marsh and Huxley who respectively originated and endorsed the linear model?
It may have been Marsh (I'll not be able to check for two days) but Huxley was taken by the views of whichever one he visited.
Talkorigins says it was Marsh. Not that it really matters for the point of this article.
Huxley was promoting the idea of horses as having done most of their evolving in the Old World (after all that's where modern horses live, and where some of the earliest horses were found.) He visited America, Marsh showed him the American species (complete with linear pattern) and he promptly changed his mind when presented with further evidence.
Its hard to resist putting a few transitional fossils in a linear arrangement when you only have a couple of closely related extant species, and no idea for how diverse the clade was previously. Especially for 19th century workers still influenced by ideas of the "scala naturae".
I'm not clear why these remains are "crucial", and the article isn't any help there. We know quite a few genera of three-toed horses, particularly from the Miocene and Pliocene -- or so I thought.
Though I'd be delighted and proud to find ancient horse remains, too. :-)