Abstract:

Giant deer is among the most common animals of Mid-Late Pleistocene sites in northern China, and was one of the representative icons of the Pleistocene fauna in northern China, while the fossil materials are fairly poor and very few complete antlers were ever recovered, except those from Zhoukoudian site; on the other hand, the knowledge about the age-related changes of the antlers is absolutely insufficient. Therefore, the previous taxonomic work based only on the antler features is open to questions.

In 2018, a quite complete antler of giant deer was recovered from the Nanbaishan site of Middle Paleolithic period in Yüxian County, Hebei Province. The antler is quite big; brow tine and the palmation of beam are thin and fan-like, without palm tines; the brow tine and the palmation of beam run along two nearly parallel planes, but are not exactly parallel; the shaft of the beam bends at the basal part, but the sigmoid form is not prominent. In general morphology, the new antler is very close to that of Sinomegaceros ordosianus. The new specimen represents the most complete antler of S. ordosianus ever recovered. The dimensions (L: length & W: width) of the palmate is 670×526.8 mm; the dimensions (L& W) of the brow tine is 510×480 mm, the length and circumference of the beam are 270 and 193 mm respectively, the circumference of the burr is 310 mm. The first phalanx is robust, its greatest length is 77.7 mm; proximal width is 29.2 mm, transverse and antero-posterior diameters are 24.0 and 26.0 mm respectively.

In China, quite a number of megalocerine taxa had been named at the species and subspecies levels, namely Sinomegaceros pachyosteus, S. ordosianus, S. flabellatus, S. konwanlinensis, S. youngi, S. luochuanensis, S. sangganhoensis, S. o. mentougouensis and S. baotouensis, among which S. ordosianus is the most widely distributed species and has the richest fossil records. On the contrary, S. baotouensis is the least known species which only represented by one shed antler and one metatarsal bone. With only a few exceptions, e.g. Tangshan near Nanjing, Zhoushan island in Zhejiang and Hualong Cave in Anhui, all the other megalocerine fossil sites in China occur north of the Yangtze River, and most of them are located in northern China. The fossils of S. ordosianus were frequently appeared in the prehistoric site, which indicates that the giant deer was very probably among the food sources of early humans. The OSL age of the Nanbaishan site is around 110 kaBP, which falls into the range of the Middle Paleolithic period.

Key words: Sinomegaceros, antler fossil, Nanbaishan site, Late Pleistocene, Yüxian, Hebei