''Torontoceros'' ("horn of

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

") was an extinct genus of

deer A deer (: deer) or true deer is a hoofed ruminant ungulate of the family Cervidae (informally the deer family). Cervidae is divided into subfamilies Cervinae (which includes, among others, muntjac, elk (wapiti), red deer, and fallow deer) ...

, nicknamed the Toronto subway deer. It lived in the

Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as the Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division ...

(around 12,000 - 11,000 years ago) in

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

while likely being native elsewhere.Churcher, CS, and RL Peterson. 1982
''Chronologic and Environmental Implications of a New Genus of Fossil Deer from Late Wisconsin Deposits at Toronto, Canada''
Quaternary Research 18, 184-195. The sole species is ''T. hypogaeus''.

Discovery

Fossils of ''Torontoceros'' were first unearthed in 1977 from Late Pleistocene deposits exposed by excavations brought about by the construction of the Bloor-Danforth subway line in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, the sediments dating to the

. It was later described by Canadian paleontologists C. S. Churcher and R. L. Peterson in 1982 as a new genus and species of cervid after the specimen had been donated to the

Royal Ontario Museum The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada. It attracts more than one million visitors every year ...

where the fossils were housed under specimen number ROMM 75974. The fossils were incomplete, consisting only of a damaged

braincase In human anatomy, the neurocranium, also known as the braincase, brainpan, brain-pan, or brainbox, is the upper and back part of the skull, which forms a protective case around the brain. In the human skull, the neurocranium includes the calv ...

with attached

antlers Antlers are extensions of an animal's skull found in members of the Cervidae (deer) Family (biology), family. Antlers are a single structure composed of bone, cartilage, fibrous tissue, skin, nerves, and blood vessels. They are generally fo ...

, though they were noted to be very heavily-built for the size of the animal. Torontoceros

The genus'

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, altho ...

comes from the Greek words for below and earth, as it was found several metres underground.

Description

''Torontoceros'' is known from an incomplete skeleton, however it is sufficient to hypothesise its appearance. This animal is believed to have been as large as a current

caribou The reindeer or caribou (''Rangifer tarandus'') is a species of deer with circumpolar distribution, native to Arctic, subarctic, tundra, boreal, and mountainous regions of Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. It is the only represe ...

, and the appearance was also reminiscent of it. The large antlers, however, appear to have been much larger and heavier than those of the present forms. The surface of the pedicles indicates that the ''Torontoceros'' specimen had died in the spring, when the antlers were still covered with velvet and not yet fully developed.

Classification

''Torontoceros'' was a member of the Capreolinae subfamily of deer in the tribe Rangiferini, although it is unclear what its closest relationships were.

Paleoecology

Fossil

pollen Pollen is a powdery substance produced by most types of flowers of seed plants for the purpose of sexual reproduction. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced Gametophyte#Heterospory, microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm ...

found on the site indicate that ''Torontoceros'' lived in an environment consisting of

deciduous forest In the fields of horticulture and botany, the term deciduous () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, after flo ...

s and

coniferous forest Conifers () are a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class, Pinopsida. All e ...

s, at the end of the last ice age. It is likely that this animal lived side by side with the first North American humans, the

Paleo-Indians Paleo-Indians were the first peoples who entered and subsequently inhabited the Americas towards the end of the Late Pleistocene period. The prefix ''paleo-'' comes from . The term ''Paleo-Indians'' applies specifically to the lithic period in ...

. Some footprints found in 1908 during other works, just 300 meters from the place where ''Torontoceros'' was found indicate the presence of the oldest humans in North America; unfortunately the footprints were destroyed.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q37763730 Capreolinae Prehistoric deer Monotypic prehistoric Artiodactyla genera Pleistocene Artiodactyla Pleistocene genus extinctions Pleistocene first appearances Fossils of Canada Paleontology in Ontario History of Toronto Fossil taxa described in 1982