Giant deer (Irish elk)
Megaloceros giganteus
With its extreme antlers, the giant deer is a classic example in debates about sexual selection and the extinction of the ice-age giants.
Image: Urville Djasim from The Netherlands · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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Characteristics
- Scientific name
- Megaloceros giganteus
- Period
- Pleistocene – early Holocene
- Lived
- 0.4–0.008 Ma (400,000 years ago)
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Habitat
- Plains, Forest
- Mass (estimate)
- 600 kg
- Discovered/described
- 1799 · Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (description)
Description
The giant deer, also called the Irish elk, was one of the largest deer ever, with antlers up to 3.6 metres across. Despite its name it was not an elk: its closest living relative is the fallow deer. Many skeletons come from Irish bogs, but the species lived from Ireland to Siberia and only died out after the last ice age.
Habitat
Open grasslands and light woodland from Ireland to Siberia.
Fossil sites
Ballybetagh, County Dublin
Cultural profile: Ireland →
Contemporaries in the database
Sources: Megaloceros