11/11/2023 0 Comments Megaloceros giganteus irish elk![]() The name “Irish” has stuck because excellent, well-preserved fossils of the giant deer are especially common in lake sediments and peat bogs in Ireland. It ranged throughout Europe, northern Asia and northern Africa, and a related form is known from China. The Irish elk evolved during the glacial periods of the last million years, during the Pleistocene Epoch. It is a giant extinct deer, the largest deer species that ever lived, reaching up to seven feet at the shoulder (2.1 meters), with antlers spanning up to 12 feet (3.65 meters). Megaloceros giganteus (Blumenbach, 1799) is more commonly known as the Irish Elk – though it is neither exclusively Irish nor an elk. Provenance: deaccessioned by Museum Biochron, Emmen, The Netherlands Maximum width of antlers: 303 cm / 119.1 in A combination of human presence along rivers and slow decrease in habitat quality in upland areas presented the last Irish Elk with the choice of either good habitat but considerable hunting pressure, or general absence of humans in a suboptimal habitat.Weight: approximately 200 kilograms / 440 lbs The situation is less clear for the Irish Elk in continental Eurasia east of the Urals. The disappearance of the local populations of Irish Elk is not surprising, because as climate warmed they would be separated from each other by water. They come from a region with a continental climate where the proposed vegetation changes had not (yet) occurred. giganteus in northern Siberia, dated to 8,000 years ago – well after the end of the last glacial period – shows no sign of nutrient stress. When the climate changed at the end of the last glacial period, the vegetation in the animal's habitat also changed. Thus, in the antler growth phase, Giant Deer were suffering from a condition similar to osteoporosis. The males (and male deer in general) met this requirement partly from their bones, replenishing them from food plants after the antlers were grown or reclaiming the nutrients from discarded antlers (as has been observed in extant deer). High amounts of calcium and phosphate compounds are needed to form antlers, and therefore large quantities of these minerals are required for the massive structures of the Irish Elk. ![]() One is that climate change was primary the other claims that hunting by man was primary. Theories about the extinction of ice age megafauna are of two kinds. giganteus did not even have to turn its head to present the antlers to best effect, but could do this by simply looking straight ahead. Although they were ill-suited for combat between males, they were ideal to intimidate rivals or impress females. Gould concluded that the large antler size and their position on the skull was very much maintained by sexual selection. This suggests that the antlers of the species' ancestors were already large to begin with. This is due to allometry, or differential growth rate of body size and antler size during development. Larger deer species have antlers that are more than proportionately larger. The Irish Elk is no different in that respect. Also, many other Pleistocene megafauna went extinct within a few thousand years of the end of the ice age. This is simply nonsense, because no species survives that long if it is not effective in its habitat. It was also suggested that they eventually became so unwieldy that the Irish Elk could not carry on the normal business of life and so became extinct. One theory was that their antlers, under constant and strong sexual selection, increased in size because males were using them in combat for access to females. The size of Irish Elk antlers is distinctive, and several theories have arisen as to their evolution. giganteus skeletons can be found at the Natural History Museum in Dublin. The Irish Elk got to a mass of about 450–600 kg (990–1,320 lb), with large specimens having weighed 700 kg (1,540 lb) or more, roughly similar to the Alaskan Moose. In body size, the Irish Elk matched the living moose subspecies ( Alces alces gigas) as the largest known deer.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |