Genetic study shines light on Toronto’s ancient ‘subway deer’

For visitors wandering among mastodon skeletons and other impressive remains from the Pleistocene epoch at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, a non-descript piece of cranium with broken stubs of antlers may not be the most arresting sight.

Yet the bony fragment inside the glass case is a tantalizing clue to the vanished world that once existed where the city stands today – a nascent wilderness that emerged from the frozen mantle of the ice age more than 11,000 years ago.