The first species of the genus
S. ordosianus and
S. pachyosteus were named by pioneering Chinese paleontologist
C. C. Young as species of
Cervus in 1932 for material from
Zhoukoudian. In a review of the paper the subsequent year Dietrich created the name
Sinomegaceros as a
subgenus of
Cervus to house the species, with
S. pachyosteus as the
type species. Due to the fact that the name was not published in a formal research paper, it was not widely used for several decades after publication. In the following decades various researchers considered it a subgenus of
Megaloceros, or a distinct genus. Several named species are likely to be junior synonyms. Named species include:
Sinomegaceros has often been considered closely related to other genera "giant deer", like
Praemegaceros and
Megaloceros, as part of the tribe Megacerini.''
Mitochondrial genomes from Late Pleistocene Chinese and Siberian Sinomegaceros
(including S. ordosianus
and S. pachyosteus
) indicate that the mitochondrial diversity of the Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus
, also known as the giant deer) is nested within the diversity of Sinomegaceros,
suggesting that the two lineages interbred after their initial split. This interbreeding may have occurred in the contact region between the two groups in Siberia. Relationships of Sinomegaceros'' mitochondrial genomes after Xiao, et al. 2023 }}}}}}}} == Description ==