First antler-shedding deer

The earliest antler-shedding deer currently known from the fossil record is Dicrocerus elegans, which lived in Europe during the Miocene epoch approximately 20 million to 5 million years ago, with fossil records from France, Germany, Portugal, Slovakia and Serbia, as well as from China in Asia. Its antlers were of simple structure (and hence are dubbed proantlers), being forked (Dicrocerus translates as "forked antlers"), but lacking tines, and with a thickened base. They were borne only by males, and were shed annually. The main stem of each antler became ever shorter with each shedding, as occurs today in modern-day muntjacs.

Dicrocerus elegans stood 70 cm tall at the shoulder – the same height as a modern-day roe deer – and was a grazer-browser that inhabited temperate forests, but it had died out by the beginning of the Pliocene epoch, leaving no direct descendants.