Did American Ice Age Horses Have Bold Black and White Stripes Like Zebras?

I think some popular depictions are wrong.

They lived alongside the mammoths. No human alive today has seen the ancient horses that roamed America near the end of the last Ice Age. These equines went extinct alongside the likes of Smilodon, leaving no descendants. After they perished, North America was horseless for millennia, from sea to shining sea, until settlers brought their domesticated horses with them. What did these extinct equines look like?

Last time I moved, the U-Haul truck we rented happened to have a graphic of a giant zebra head on the side. Or so it seemed! Actually, it was meant to depict the Hagerman horse, whose bones have been found in great abundance in Idaho. Until I read the text accompanying the image, I had no idea it was depicting anything other than a zebra from the plains of Africa! Those black and white stripes are iconic and unmistakeably suggest a zebra. What a bold choice! The accompanying article on the company’s website is fascinating and raises as many questions as answers. Were the Ice Age horses in the Americas truly more like zebras, covered in bold, striped coats? Were they solid-colored? Were they a combination of earth tones and patterned fur? (I doodled a quick rendition below of a possible brown-and-striped pattern for the…