Jill Vogel, age 9, of Crestwood, Mo., for her question:

HOW DID HORSES GET TO AMERICA?

Fossils show that during the Ice Age, horses lived on every continent except Australia. Great herds wandered across North and South America. Then, for some unknown reason, all of the horses disappeared from the Western Hemisphere.

The first European colonists found no horses in North America and the Indians living here did not know what the animals were until the Spanish conquerors brought them to Mexico in 1519.

The Spaniards and later explorers left some of their horses behind, and they became wild. These Spanish horses became the ancestors of the American wild horse. Horses played an important part in the development and exploration of North America.