CERVID.E 371 



Family II. — Cervid^e. 



Cuvier* first made known the fact of teeth with the charac- 

 ter of ruminant molars, and of portions of antlers, being asso- 

 ciated with remains of Lophiodon and Mastodon in the fresh- 

 water miocene beds of Montabusard, department of the Loiret. 

 These early ruminant fossils agreed in size with the roebuck ; 

 but there were characters showing that they differed almost 

 generically from all known deer. In 1834? Professor Kaup 

 received from the miocene strata near Eppelsheim, Darmstadt, 

 the entire cranium of a small Ruminant, the teeth of which 

 were identical with those described and figured by Cuvier; 

 but the series being complete, showed that the animal had 

 long procumbent canines, as in the Mosclms moschiferus ; in 

 some secondary characters of the teeth, however, as in the 

 proportions of the premolars, and especially the presence of 

 the first of that series, at least in the lower jaw, it was generi- 

 cally distinct from Mosclms or Tragidus. Moreover, the animal 

 had possessed, like the males of the small deer of India called 

 " Muntjac," antlers as well as long canine teeth. Both in the 

 miocene beds of Ingre and Eppelsheim, antlers have been found 

 which were supported on long pedicles, as in the muntjac, and 

 simply bifurcate near their end. It is probable that these 

 horns, which have been referred to the nominal species Cervus 

 anocerus, may belong to the Dorcathcrium of Kaup. 



Other species of Cervidce were, however, associated with 

 that remarkable form in the miocene period. Dr. Kaup 

 ascribes some more or less mutilated antlers, which had been 

 shed, to a species he calls G. dicranocerus. The beam rises 

 from one to two inches without sending off any branch or brow- 

 antler ; it then sends off a branch so large and so oblique that 

 the beam seems here to bifurcate ; the anterior prong is, how- 

 ever, the smallest and shortest. The writer has received similar 

 shed and mutilated antlers from the red crag of Sussex, which 



* Ossemens Fossilos, 4to, torn, iv., p. 104, pi. viii., figs. . r > and 6. 



