mouse-goat

English

Etymology

Translating Myotragus (genus name).

Noun

mouse-goat (plural mouse-goats)

1. An extinct genus of goat-antelope, Myotragus, which lived on the Balearic Islands in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene.
   • 2011, Dennis McCarthy, Here Be Dragons:

     Other island examples include pygmy hippos, pygmy deer, pygmy foxes, and the peculiar “mouse-goat”—an extinct species of dwarf sheep that had lived on the Balearic Islands of Spain.

   • 2014, Paul D. Taylor, Aaron O'Dea, A History of Life in 100 Fossils, page 201:

     Bones of this animal – the so called ‘mouse-goat’, Myotragus balearicus – were first discovered by the pioneering fossil hunter Dorothea Bate (1878–1951).

   • 2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: The First 100 Million Years, Penguin, published 2019, page 249:

     It was once thought that the first humans in the Balearics had domesticated the mouse-goat, as what appeared to be pens filled with dung were found in some caves.