ORIGIN OF AMERICAN DEER 
111 
remainder of the continent. On the other hand, there is living 
in Europe and Asia at the present time a genus of deer 
(Capreolus) which has several important characters in 
common with Odocoileus and its more primitive South 
American relations. The genus Capreolus, which includes 
the roedeer, is distinguished from all the other Old World 
deer in its tele-metacarpal front limbs, that is to say in the 
possession of the lower remnants of the lateral metacarpal 
bones. It resembles, as we already know, in this character 
the true American deer. Moreover, as Mr. Rdrig * has 
pointed out, this is not the only feature of resemblance be¬ 
tween Capreolus and Odocoileus. The antlers of the former 
likewise agree with those of the New World deer, rather than 
with those of the Old World. Capreolus has the backwardly 
directed tine of Odocoileus, and lacks the brow tine of Cervus. 
Even in the period of renewal of the antlers, the roedeer 
agrees with the American deer, this change taking place in 
the winter months, while it occurs in all the other Old World 
deer in the spring and summer. Only three kinds of roedeer 
exist at present. In Miocene and Pliocene times, however, • 
France and Germany were tenanted by quite a large 
assemblage of tele-metacarpal deer, all of which lacked the 
brow tine like Capreolus. The earlier history of these deer 
is largely obscured by the circumstance that only fragmen¬ 
tary parts of the skeleton are known. Thus the Miocene 
species of Dicrocerus, which is supposed to be related to the 
living Cervulus, possessed antlers that can be almost matched 
by some of the recent South American mountain forms of 
Odocoileus, whereas other South American forms (Blasto- 
cerus) remind one of the modem roebuck.f 
I venture to think that all the deer of South America have 
originated from one or more ancestors which invaded that 
continent direct from western Europe in early Tertiary times. 
Although it is true that we possess little palaeontological evi¬ 
dence in support of such a theory, a land connection must 
then have joined Europe with South America. The prob¬ 
able period of this migration from Europe to South America, 
* Rdrig, Ad., “ Wachstum des Geweihes,” p. 424. 
t Rdrig, Ad., “ Phylogenie des Cervidengeweihes,” p. 542. 
