to contribute the mutated allele for a physically affected foal to be produced with that phenotype. The study suggested that the mutation was of relatively recent origin: the founder of the mutated gene, as all the ponies who tested positive for the mutation are direct descendants of this stallion. The probable founder stallion has been identified as Kantje's Ronaldo; testing is now underway to identify which of his offspring carry the mutated gene. All carriers will be removed from the breeding section of the New Forest Pony Breeding & Cattle Society's stud book, and all New Forest stallions licensed in the UK also will be tested, whether or not they descend from Kantje's Ronaldo, to cover the possibility that the mutated gene may have appeared earlier in the pedigree, although it is believed that the mutated gene has now been eradicated from the British breeding stock. All breeding stock imported to the UK also will be tested. History Ponies have grazed in the area of the New Forest for many thousands of years, predating the last Ice Age. Spear damage on a horse shoulder bone discovered at Eartham Pit, Boxgrove (about from the heart of the modern New Forest), dated 500,000 BC, demonstrates that early humans were hunting horses in the area at that time, and the remains of a large Ice Age hunting camp have been found close to Ringwood (on the western border of the modern New Forest). Evidence from the skeletal remains of ponies from the Bronze Age suggests that they resembled the modern Exmoor pony. Horse bones excavated from Iron Age ritual burial sites at Danebury (about from the heart of the modern New Forest), indicate that the animals were approximately – a height similar to that of some of the smaller New Forest ponies of today. William the Conqueror, who claimed the New Forest as a royal hunting ground, shipped more than two thousand horses across the English Channel when he invaded England in 1066. The earliest written record of horses in the New Forest dates back to that time, when rights of common of pasture were granted to the area's inhabitants. A popular tradition linking the ancestry of the New Forest pony to Spanish horses said to have swum ashore from wrecked ships at the time of the Spanish Armada has, according to the New Forest National Park Authority, "long been accepted as a