In 1493 Arab and Barb type horses from Spain arrived in the New World, first disembarking on the Caribbean islands. In the spring of 1519, Hernán Cortés and his men and their horses arrived on the shores of Antigua Veracruz, Central America, stamping hoof prints on the continent for the first time since the Equus extinction left this half of the world without horses for the previous 10,000 years. In the following decades, these equines populated North America, becoming the great American Mustang, the foundation horse of the Americas.