[6][7] The tarpan was first described by Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin in 1771;[8] he had seen the animals in 1769 in the district of Bobrov, near Voronezh.

In 1784, Pieter Boddaert named the species Equus ferus, referring to Gmelin's description.

It is now thought that the domesticated horse, named Equus caballus by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, is descended from the tarpan; indeed, many taxonomists consider them to belong to the same species.

However, biologists have generally ignored the letter of the rule and used E. ferus for the tarpan to avoid confusion with the domesticated subspecies.

[9] Most studies have been based on only two preserved specimens and research to date has not positively linked the tarpan to Pleistocene or Holocene-era animals.

[citation needed] In 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature "conserved the usage of 17 specific names based on wild species, which are predated by or contemporary with those based on domestic forms", confirming E. ferus for the undomesticated wild horse.

[3] The last individual, which died in captivity in 1909, was between 140 and 145 centimetres (55 and 57 in; 13.3 and 14.1 hands) tall at the shoulders, and had a thick, falling mane, a grullo coat colour, dark legs, and primitive markings, including a dorsal stripe and shoulder stripes.

[16] Wild horses have been present in Europe since the Pleistocene and ranged from southern France and Spain east to central Russia.

[17] Equus ferus had a continuous range from western Europe to Alaska; historic material suggests wild horses lived in most parts of Holocene continental Europe and the Eurasian steppe, except for parts of Scandinavia, Iceland and Ireland.

(DOM2 horses originated from the Western Eurasia steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don, but not in Anatolia, during the late fourth and early third millennia BCE.

[3] Nevertheless, a stocky type of horse living in forests and highlands was described during the 19th century in Spain, the Pyrenees, the Camargue, the Ardennes, Great Britain, and the southern Swedish upland.

[19] Black wild horses were found in Dutch swamps, with a large skull, small eyes, and a bristly muzzle.

[7] Herodotus described light-coloured wild horses in an area now part of Ukraine in the 5th century BCE.

In the 12th century, Albertus Magnus stated that mouse-coloured wild horses with a dark eel stripe lived in the German territory, and in Denmark, large herds were hunted.

According to him, those wild horses were of small body size, had a blackish brown colour, a large and thick head, short dark manes and tail hair, and a "beard".

[citation needed] Kajetan Kozmian visited the population at Zamość as well and reported that they were small and strong, had robust limbs and a consistently dark mouse colour.

They were typically mouse-coloured with a light belly and legs becoming black, although grey and white horses were mentioned as well.

The colour of alleged pure tarpans was described as consistently brown, cream-coloured or mouse-coloured.

As large herbivores, the range of the tarpan was continuously decreased by the increasing human population of the Eurasian landmass.

Wild horses were further targeted because they caused damage to hay stores and often took domestic mares from pastures.

[23] The oldest archaeological evidence for domesticated horses is from Kazakhstan and Ukraine between 6,000 and 5,500 YBP (years before present).

Few consider the more recent animals historically called "tarpans" to be genuine wild horses without domestic influence.

[3] In 2021, a study found that the so-called 'Shatilov' tarpan, a museum specimen from the Kherson region of the Pontic–Caspian steppe that died in 1868[citation needed], was a hybrid between two horse lineages, with two thirds of its genetics representing the same ancestral lineage as modern horses, and the remaining third related to a distinct lineage of European horses found at an archaeological site associated with the late-Neolithic Corded Ware culture.

[27] Three attempts have been made to use selective breeding to create a type of horse that resembles the tarpan phenotype, though recreating an extinct subspecies is not genetically possible with current technology.

[26] In the early 1930s, Berlin Zoo Director Lutz Heck and Heinz Heck of the Munich Zoo began a program crossbreeding Koniks with Przewalski horse stallions, and the mares of Gotland ponies, and Icelandic horses,.