American mountain deer

Odocoileus lucasi, historically incorrectly confused with Navahoceros fricki, and known as the American mountain deer, is an extinct species of North American deer.

Name

Kurten described a species he called Navahoceros fricki in 1975. However, his 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.