One to watch...

A seventeen year old is trying to make Olympic history by making the team as the youngest US rider ever.  She would be able to compete legally in the show jumping world - turning 18 just 18 days before the London Olympics.

“My mind frame has changed from, ‘You know, I’m just going for experience,’ to now, ‘I want to be on the team and I have a chance.’ ” Kessler said. “I’m going to go in there like I’m Beezie and lay down the best performance that I can.”

We're cheering for all the Olympic hopefuls next week and in London, beyond.  Who are you rooting for?!

Read the whole article here.

New Research: The Domestication of Horses

 "For several decades scientists puzzled over the origin of domesticated horses. Based on archaeological evidence, it had long been thought that horse domestication originated in the western part of the Eurasian Steppe (Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan); however, a single origin in a geographically restricted area appeared at odds with the large number of female lineages in the domestic horse gene pool, commonly thought to reflect multiple domestication "events" across a wide geographic area.

In order to solve the perplexing history of the domestic horse, scientists from the University of Cambridge used a genetic database of more than 300 horses sampled from across the Eurasian Steppe to run a number of different modelling scenarios.

Their research shows that the extinct wild ancestor of domestic horses, Equus ferus, expanded out of East Asia approximately 160,000 years ago. They were also able to demonstrate that Equus ferus was domesticated in the western Eurasian Steppe, and that herds were repeatedly restocked with wild horses as they spread across Eurasia."

Read the entire article here.