Mormons everywhere: the other day I was searching info on Jewish and Arab names, and one of my searches floated this lovely page to the top of Google's list: Book of Mormon Evidences. Somebody named Jeff Lindsay put a lot of time and effort into this site. I've scanned over it, and noted that many scholarly Mormon publications are cited, along with numerous Mormon archaology experts such as Hugh Nibley. It is truly amazing the volume of evidence you can come up with when you start with a forgone conclusion. I'm sold! Where's the next baptism? One link on this site contains a survey of evidence for horses and cattle in the pre-Columbian Americas. The page presents a number of photos of prehistoric pictographs, and quotations from old archaeology journals. Keeping true to the form of religious arguments, the page implies that because anthropologists lack complete and detailed explanations for all images and artifacts, the Book of Mormon must be the correct account. The page also notes that paleontologists believe animals related to horses existed in the Americas until they became extinct in 10,000 BC. The page does not explain how any of the "evidence" contradicts the extinction claim. I found another article on this subject in National Geographic which I think clears up the issue:

Prehistoric horses, which were much smaller than today's horses, standing about 4.5 feet (1.5 meters) high at the shoulder, became extinct about 10,000 years ago. Scientists considered it likely that hunting by humans was a factor in their extinction, but until now there was no hard proof. The first conclusive evidence comes from spearheads tainted with the residue of horse protein. They were found along with other animal remains on the river plain of St. Mary's Reservoir in southern Alberta, Canada. "In the past, we could really only attribute the demise of these ancient horses to climate and environmental changes," said Brian Kooyman, an archaeologist at the University of Calgary and the lead scientist at the dig. "There has been suggestive evidence at other sites—Lubbock Lake in Texas, for instance—that early peoples were utilizing horses," he said. "But this discovery raises the very real possibility that overhunting by the Clovis people played a significant role in the extinction." European explorers reintroduced horses to the New World several thousand years after the ancient ones died out.

'Nuff said.