A Reassessment of the Cranial Diversity of the West African Giraffe

The West African giraffe Giraffa camelopardalis peralta, the rarest giraffe subspecies, is one of the least studied taxa of the African megafauna in terms of anatomy, physiology, and taxonomy due to the limited material hosted in museum collections. Here, we discuss specific morphological features of the holotype of this subspecies, re‐evaluate its diagnostic characteristics and expand our knowledge of the morphology of the taxon with the addition of specimens collected in the wild. Our results show that G. c. peralta is not a subspecies of ‘gigantic’ proportions, as indicated in previous studies. This misunderstanding arose from the misidentification of the holotype specimen (NHMUK‐ZD‐1898.2.19.1) as a female instead of a male. The only other G. c. peralta specimen, which is hosted in the same collections in the Natural History Museum of London (NHMUK‐ZD‐1904.11.2.2), is a male of morphology and size much closer to that of an average G. camelopardalis male. Our findings show that in comparison to other giraffe subspecies the dimensions of G. c. peralta are as metrically expected and reveal preliminary evidence of the strongest sexual size dimorphism in the genus Giraffa. We further suggest that the holotype should be relabeled as a male. The evolutionary history and the phylogenetic position of G. c. peralta are discussed, favoring the mixing‐isolation‐mixing pattern with the Kordofan giraffe (G. c. antiquorum).