Palæont. [ad. mod.L. anchithērium (also in Eng. use), f. Gr. ἄγχι near + θηρίον wild beast.] A fossil animal as large as a small pony, having three toes on each foot, found in the Eocene and Miocene strata; regarded evolutionally as an ancestor of the horse, and as forming a link between carnivora with toes and herbivora with hoofs.
1879. Le Conte, Elem. Geol., 509. The Miohippus of the United States and the nearly allied Anchithere of Europe, more horse-like than the last.
1881. Lubbock, in Nature, No. 618. 403/2. Huxley has traced up the genealogy of the horse to the Miocene Anchitherium.
