American Mountain Deer

American Mountain Deer Temporal range: late Pleistocene
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Artiodactyla
Family:	Cervidae
Subfamily:	Capreolinae
Genus:	†Navahoceros Kurtén, 1975
Species:	†N. fricki
Binomial name
†Navahoceros fricki (Schultz and Howard, 1935)

The American Mountain Deer or Mountain Deer (Navahoceros fricki) has been declared a 'nomen nudum', or an invalid construct (Morejohn and Dailey 2004).

It has been show to correspond to Odocoileus lucasi. See Odocoileus lucasi.

Navahoceros fricki was described an extinct member of the family Cervidae and was most common in the North American Rocky Mountains during the Pleistocene. It survived to about 11,500 Bp from evidence found in Burnet Cave in the Guadalupe Mountains of southern New Mexico.

However, Kurten’s (1975) analysis has been questioned based on technical grounds and new paleontological data. Kurten’s analysis presented in 1,5 pages was based on averages of length of dissociated bones (samples sizes 9-52), without specifying the sex nor age of the source animals, nor providing standard deviations to let the reader know about variability due to sex and age. As neither the museum catalog numbers were listed, it is impossible to duplicate his analysis.

One comparative element he used were the skeletal measurements of a single (1) mule deer, but he did not provide the data on sex, age or locality. However, from data provided by Klein (1964) and McMahon (1975), the relative lower leg length of mule deer can vary at least by 22%.

Kurten also stated that Navahoceros resembled ibex (Capra ibex) based on short metapodials which made him label the Navahoceros as a mountain deer with an Alpine climbing mode of locomotion (like ibex), but without providing data on ibex. However, data from Fernandez and Monchot (2007) on ibex show that their bone measurements are far from the averages of Navahoceros presented by Kurten.

More recently, Morejohn and Dailey (2004) published the analysis of the osteological anatomy and morphology of a practically complete skeleton of a pleistocene adult male, Odocoileus lucasi (Hay 1927) along with other collections labeled as O. lucasi. Moreover, for their 54- page analysis they visited most collections of samples identified as Navahoceros as well as other species for a comparative analysis (Cervalces scotti, Alces alces, Rangifer tarandus, Odocoileus hemionus, O. virginianus, Hippocamelus antisensis, H. bisulcus, Mazama americana, Pudu mephistophiles, P. puda, Ozotoceros bezoarticus, Blastocerus dichotomus), located in 27 different institutions worldwide. They also dissected and analyzed fresh materials of Alces, Cervus, Mazama, Odocoileus hemionus and O. virginianus, Ozotoceros, Pudu , and Rangifer.

The main conclusions from the analysis by Morejohn and Dailey (2004) are:

- they consider Navahoceros to be a "nomen nudum"

- all revised bones which were labeled as Navahoceros were shown to belong to Odocoileus lucasi. This includes exhibition-mounts which were assembled from dissociated bones

Although Navahoceros entered the scene based on a very weak analysis which is impossible to verify (Kurten 1975), the best current evidence based on an extensive comparative study shows that Navahoceros was an invalid construct and pertains to Odocoileus lucasi Hay 1927 (Morejohn and Dailey 2004). Subsequent publications referring to Kurten’s Navahoceros simply cited his interpretations without questioning its validity. It is recommended that any future discussion, or reference to Navahoceros, be done explicitly in relation to the known information on Odocoileus lucasi.

References

• Kurtén, B., 1975, A new Pleistocene genus of American mountain deer: Journal of Mammalogy, v. 56, p. 507—508.
• Pleistocene Mammals of North America, By Björn Kurtén, Elaine Anderson, ISBN 0-231-03733-3
• McKenna, Malcolm C., and Bell, Susan K. 1997. Classification of Mammals Above the Species Level. Columbia University Press, New York, 631 pp. ISBN 0-231-11013-8
• Klein, DR, 1964. Range-related differences in growth of deer reflected in skeletal ratios. J. Mammal. 45(2):226-235.
• McMahon, TA, 1975. Allometry and biomechanics: limbbones in adult ungulates. The American Naturalist 109:547-563.
• Morejohn, GV and CD Dailey. 2004. The identity and postcranial osteology of Odocoileus lucasi (Hay) 1927. Sierra Coll. Nat. Hist. Mus. Bull. 1:1-54.
• Fernandez H and H Monchot. 2007. Sexual Dimorphism in Limb Bones of Ibex (Capra ibex L.): Mixture Analysis Applied to Modern and Fossil Data. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 17:479-491.