Figure 2

Most parsimonious tree of the cladistic analysis (30 taxa; 129 characters; Length = 398; CI = 0.472; RI = 0.705; HI = 0.528) recovered by PAUP 4.0β10⁴⁷ and edited by Adobe Photoshop CC2017. Grey numbers report the Bootstrap values, whereas numbers included in circles represent the nodes discussed in the text. Terminal color branches indicate the following different genera identified by the cladistic analysis: yellow, Merychippus; Cyan, Cormohipparion; grey, Pliohippus; purple, Hippidion; green, Dinohippus; dark red to orange, Equus. On the right, red color box indicates the genus Equus, black box Zebras, dark green box Asses and blue box Modern Horses. Black circles indicate the previous genus attribution to Plesippus, whereas black squares Allohippus. The detailed analyses are reported in Appendix 1.