Torontoceros ("horn of Toronto") is an extinct genus of deer, with the sole known fossil nicknamed the Toronto subway deer. It lived in the Late Pleistocene (around 12,000 - 11,000 years ago) in Ontario while likely being native over a larger area.[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 during the construction of the Bloor-Danforth subway line in
Toronto,
Canada. 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, where the fossils were housed under specimen number ROMM 75974. The fossils were incomplete, consisting only of a damaged
Neurocranium with attached
Antler, though they were noted to be very heavily-built for the size of the animal.
The species name hypogaeus comes from the Greek words for below and earth, as it was found several metres underground.
Description
Torontoceros is known from an incomplete skeleton, which is however sufficient to hypothesise its appearance. This animal is believed to have been as large as a current
Reindeer, with its appearance 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
Reindeer. A 2025 genetic study determined that its closet relative was the genus
Odocoileus, which in northern North America includes white-tailed deer and
mule deer, rather than the caribou that
Torontoceros is thought to have resembled.
Paleoecology
Fossil
pollen found on the site indicates that
Torontoceros lived in an environment consisting of
and coniferous forests 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. Some footprints found in 1908 during other works, just 300 metres from where
Torontoceros was found, indicate the presence of the oldest humans in North America; unfortunately the footprints were destroyed.
