An undetermined animal specimen of Cervidae deposited in the Museum of Anhui Normal University has many characteristics similar to male sika deer excect for both buckhorns without any ramus. In the present study,a partial sequence of mitochondrial DNA cytochrome b gene was cloned and sequenced,then submitted to NCBI for blast. The results showed that the target sequence of the examined animal had great similarity to that of sika deer with the sequence difference between the two animals only 0.9%,which was inside of the range of cytochrome b gene sequence variation within species (0-3%). Similarly,phylogenetic analysis based on the the cytochrome b gene fragment for 11 deer using Neibor-joining method also indicated that the animal was highly related to sika deer. Therefore,the animal was identified as an individual of sika deer with morphological variation in the buckhorn. Because the animal was from Jing county Anhui Province,and given the current distribution of sika deer in China,the specimen was tentatively identified as Cervus nippon pseudaxis.
