Pronghorn

Pronghorn
A pronghorn near Fort Rock, Oregon
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Artiodactyla
Suborder:	Ruminantia
Infraorder:	Pecora
Family:	Antilocapridae Gray, 1866
Genus:	Antilocapra
Binomial name
Antilocapra americana

The pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) is an even-toed ungulate mammal, the only living member of the family Antilocapridae.

It is a smallish ruminant mammal which looks like an antelope. It is 1.3–1.5 m (4 ft 3 in – 4 ft 11 in) long from nose to tail, and stands 81–104 cm (2 ft 8 in – 3 ft 5 in) high at the shoulder

The pronghorn lives in North America. It lives in the prairies, but sometimes also in the desert and the Rocky Mountains.

The antilocaprids evolved in North America, where they filled a niche similar to that of the bovids that evolved in the Old World. During the Miocene and Pliocene, they were a diverse and successful group, with many different species. Some had horns with bizarre shapes, or had four, or even six, horns.

In Africa, the bovids evolved many ruminants which look like deer (convergent evolution). True deer are a different mammal, and do not live in the southern continents. For example, in Africa they are replaced south of the Atlas Mountains by bovids.

The pronghorn is the fastest land mammal in the Western Hemisphere, with running speeds of up to 90 km/h (55 mph).^[1] It is often called the second-fastest land animal, second only to the African cheetah, and it can keep up high speeds longer than cheetahs.^[2]

1. ↑ "About ASM | American Society of Mammalogists". www.mammalsociety.org. 2011-03-16. Retrieved 2019-10-31.
2. ↑ Hawes, Alex 2001. "Pronghorns - Survivors of the American Savanna". Zoogoer. Smithsonian. [1]