Noteworthy Healed Fractures In Some North American Artiodactyla

The authors examined four medium-sized wild North American artiodactyl skeletons, all of which show limb bone pathologies that presumably affected the animal's locomotor ability. One of these animals (a white-tailed deer) lived in an urban park, and might have survived a serious limb fracture due to absence of predators. The other three (a second white-tailed deer, a mule deer, and a pronghorn) were collected in rural environments. Both white-tailed deer were collected in eastern states from which most native predators have been extirpated, but where unconfined domestic dogs might sometimes act as predators on small artiodactyls. The mule deer and pronghorn were collected on range lands in northern plains states. The two white-tailed deer display fractures of major weight-bearing limb bones in which the bone pieces had completely fused prior to the animal's death. The mule deer shows extensive osteomyelitis in the hock region. The pronghorn suffered an injury to the epiphyseal plate which resulted in a left metatarsal that is shorter than the right metatarsal. Considered as a group, these specimens demonstrate the resiliency of injured artiodactyls in wild populations with few large predators. Each of these four individuals was able to survive its injury for long enough to allow significant healing of the fractured leg bones essential to locomotion in a cursorial prey species.