Formation.—Upper Miocenes of Cucuron and Mont Léberon.
C. Cervus cusanus, Croizet and Jobert. (Fig. 2.)
Cervus cusanus, Croizet and Jobert, Les Oss. foss. de Puy-de-Dôme, 4to, pl. viii.; Pomel, Cat. Méthodique, p. 111; Gervais, Paléont. p. 149.
The antlers of this Pliocene species belong to the same round-antlered division as the Roe-deer or Capreoli, and are so closely allied to those of the Cervus Matheroni of the Upper Miocenes that the latter species may have been the ancestor of the former. The antler in the British Museum (No. 34610) from the Pliocene strata of Ardé in Le Puy belongs obviously to the same species as that figured but not described by Croizet and Jobert from Mont Perrier near Issoire.
Definition (fig. 2).—Pedicle long, round; antler rounded below, grooved, erect, three-tyned; burr, A, at right angles to long axis of antler and stout; beam flattened as it approaches second tyne, D; second tyne at acute angles to beam, oval, flattened, pointed; crown composed of two flattened tynes, C, E; no brow-tyne.
These characters, in the specimen in the British Museum, are repeated with but little modification in that figured by MM. Croizet and Jobert.
Relation to Roe-deer.—The animal was probably about the size of a Roe-deer, from which it differed in the antlers being longer and more slender, and having the channelled beam free from knobs. In general form the antlers resemble the third antlers of the Roe[1], and bear to them the same relation as those of Dicroceros to those of the Muntjak. It seems therefore to me almost certain that the Cervus cusanus was the lineal ancestor of the Roe, which makes its first appearance in the forest-bed of Norfolk, and that through it the
