Anchitherium. Illustration and photo-reconstruction of this primitive horse walking at the forest's edge. Anchitherium (meaning near beast) was a fossil horse with a three-toed hoof. It was a browsing (leaf eating) horse that originated in the early Miocene of North America and subsequently dispersed to Europe and Asia. It was around 60 cm high at the shoulder, and probably represented a side-branch of horse evolution that left no modern descendants.