Materials
The Candiacervus major tibia (specimen number 28 per Capasso Barbato & Petronio 1986 ) and metatarsal bone (specimen number 30 per Capasso Barbato & Petronio 1986 ) herein studied are part of the rich fossil sample collected mediante the 70s at the Bate cave and currently stored durante the University Museum of Earth Science (MUST, previously Museum of Paleontology), Department of Earth Sciences of the Conoscenza University (Rome, Italy).
major tibia and metatarsus with those of Cretan Candiacervus species and large continental deer (Eucladoceros, Megaloceros, Celvalces, and Alces) from various localities.
The histomorphological features shown by the bones of this species have been compared with those of verso left metatarsus (MPUR/V coll. Bate, n 16b con Capasso Barbato 1989 ) belonging preciso the group of the smallest deer found in the cave. The left metatarsal bone could be identified as C. ropalophorus (and so called here from now on), though the hypothesis that it could represent an individual belonging to one or another of the species of size-group 2 (Candiacervus sp. II, de Vos 1979 , 1984 ) cannot be excluded.
Methods
Bone measurements were taken using a digital caliper accurate onesto 0.01 mm. Multivariate statistical analysis have been performed by means of PAST programma (Hammer et al. 2001 ).
The bones were submitted onesto radiological analysis. The digital radiographic images of the tibia and metatarsus were captured exposing the bones at a distance of 120 cm from the Interrogativo-ray tube programmed with 100 kV, 10 tuttavia, 5 s of time. This distance permits considering as parallel the rays crossing the bones. The radiological images corresponding to the central part of the shaft enable us to measure the dimension come funziona chatavenue of the medullary cavity and the thickness of the cortical bone (Croker et al. 2016 ). Continue Reading We compared the dimensions and proportions of the C