Scientists have identified the origin of the "Toronto Subway deer" found 50 years ago

Scientists from Canada's Trent University in Ontario have been able to classify a species of a fossil deer found 50 years ago during the construction of the Toronto Subway, the origin of which has been controversial for decades. This was reported on October 8 by The New York Times (NYT).

The publication clarified that the horns discovered near Islington station in 1976 were extremely wide and horizontal in relation to the skull of an animal that lived, according to preliminary estimates, about 11 thousand years ago. This led experts to believe that the bones could belong to a reindeer.

"After almost 50 years, the deer revealed its secrets. Using ancient DNA extracted from the fossil, the researchers showed that despite its size and large horns with a branching tip similar to a caribou, the deer was most closely related to the mule deer and white-tailed deer," the publication says.

Paleontologist Roman Croitor from Moldovan State University, specializing in deer fossils, commenting on this information, said that such deer could have lived on Earth along with mammoths about 2 billion years ago and died out due to warming.

Currently, the extracted skeleton, which is the only evidence of the existence of the species Torontoceros, is kept at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

On August 22, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced that three massive statues dating back to the era of Ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire had been raised from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea in the port of Abu Kira. All of them were made of different materials: one of quartz, the other of granite, and the third of white marble.

All important news is on the Izvestia channel in the MAX messenger.