Van der Geer AAE, De Vos J, Lyras G, Dermitzakis M. 2006. New data on the Pleistocene Cretan deer Candiacervus sp. II (Mammalia, Cervinae). In: Kahlke R-D, Maul LC, Mazza P (eds). Late Neogene and Quaternary biodiversity and evolution: Regional developments and interregional correlations. Proceedings of the 18th International Senckenberg Conference (VI International Palaeontological Colloquium in Weimar) vol. I. Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg 256: 131-137.

A skeleton of the endemic Pleistocene Cretan deer Candiacervus sp. II (Liko, Crete, Greece) was mounted using bones of different individuals. This composite skeleton contributes to the study of the taxonomy of insular ungulates as it reveals some additional features which had not been detected in the isolated elements. Candiacervus sp.II differs from all known recent and extinct mainland deer, mainly on its proportions. Although its considerably shortened distal limbs had been already noted on the past, Candiacervus sp.II now appears at the same time to have had more or less the same vertebral column length as its large-sized continental counterparts, and a moderately upwards curved lumbar section, two features more remindful of the insular dwarf bovid Myotragus than of the small-sized mainland Axis axis. Combined with an increased massiveness of all the bones and with pronounced muscle scars, this change in body proportions indicates that Candiacervus sp.II evolved towards the niche of goat-like bovids in rocky environments. Other additional diagnostic features are the horizontally directed transversal processus of the vertebras, the fusion of the lateral metacarpal to the main metacarpal, a tail length of ten vertebras, a more pronounced difference of the anterior and posterior hooves, and the presence, both in the manus and pes, of lateral toes complete to the third phalanx.

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