Candiacervus
Candiacervus is an extinct genus of deer native to Pleistocene Crete. Due to a lack of other herbivores, the genus underwent an adaptive radiation, filling niches occupied by other taxa on the mainland. Due to the small size of Crete, some species underwent insular dwarfism, the smallest species, C. ropalophorus, stood about 40 centimetres (16 in) at the shoulders when fully grown, while other species were relatively large and comparable in size to mainland deer species. Some species are noted for their peculiar, elongate club-shaped antlers, though other species have more normal antlers.

Christian Kolb, Torsten M Scheyer, Adrian M Lister, Concepcion Azorit, John de Vos, Margaretha AJ Schlingemann, Gertr… · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- MegaceriniPBDB
- Diet
- grazer, browserPBDB, for Cervidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Cervidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Artiodactyla
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
64 occurrences of Candiacervus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
64 occurrences- Pleistocene95%
- Holocene5%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Candiacervus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Candiacervus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
87 taxa- Mus minotaurus11 sites
- Columba7 sites
- Corvus monedula7 sites
- Palaeoloxodon creutzburgi6 sites
- Testudo marginata6 sites
- Athene cretensis5 sites
- Crocidura zimmermanni5 sites
- Falco tinnunculus5 sites
- Tyto alba5 sites
- Columba palumbus4 sites
- Corvus4 sites
- Scolopax rusticola4 sites
- Turdus4 sites
- Accipiter gentilis3 sites
- Buteo buteo3 sites
- Columba oenas3 sites
- Garrulus glandarius3 sites
- Gyps fulvus3 sites
- Mauremys rivulata3 sites
- Prunella collaris3 sites
- Pyrrhocorax graculus3 sites
- Accipiter nisus2 sites
- Aegolius funereus2 sites
- Apus melba2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 27 sites for Candiacervus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
8 references- Uniformity in variety: Antler morphology and evolution in a predator-free environment43
- Taxonomy, ancestry and speciation of the endemic Pleistocene deer of Crete compared with the taxoomy ancestry and speciation of Darwin’s finches11
- Die pleistozänen Hirsche der ostmediterranen Inseln Kreta, Kasos, Karpatos und Rhodos (Griechenland)4
- The Island Rule in Large Mammals: Paleontology Meets Ecology2
- New data on the Pleistocene Cretan deer Candiacervus sp. II (Cervinae, Mammalia)1
- [The new species Elephas chaniensis from the submerged Pleistocene deposits of Vamos Cave at Chania, Crete]1
- Nuova specie di cervide del pleistocene di Creta1
- Cervus major n. sp. of Bate Cave (Rethymnon, Crete)1
Each of the 64 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Candiacervus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Christian Kolb, Torsten M Scheyer, Adrian M Lister, Concepcion Azorit, John de Vos, Margaretha AJ Schlingemann, Gertr…
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Candiacervus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itMegacerini through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Kuss 1975