giganteus, making the former a junior synonym. The type and only species named in the description being Megaloceros antiquorum, based on Irish remains now considered to belong to M.

The etymology being from Greek: μεγαλος megalos 'great' + κερας keras 'horn, antler'. Anatomical and Zoological Preparations, p 20. (Irish), with unusually fine horns, (in part restored) two uncommonly fine Crania of the Megalocerus antiquorum (Mihi). In 1827 Joshua Brookes, in a listing of his zoological collection, named the new genus Megaloceros (spelled Megalocerus in the earlier editions) in the following passage: Īmongst other Fossil Bones, there. įrench scientist Georges Cuvier documented in 1812 that the Irish elk did not belong to any species of mammal currently living, declaring it ' le plus célèbre de tous les ruminans fossiles' (the most famous of all fossil ruminants). The type specimen of giant deer is currently exposed in Barmeath Castle where Thomas Wright first saw and described it. The holotype of Megaloceros giganteus (Blumenbach, 1799) is a well-preserved male skull with exceptionally large antlers found in Dunleer environs ( County Louth, Ireland). This particular feature mentioned by Blumenbach permitted to Roman Croitor to identify the type specimen of giant deer that was figured and described for the first time in Louthiana of Thomas Wright. According to Blumenbach, the distance between summits of giant deer antlers may attain 14 feet (approximately 4.4 m). The original Blumenbach's description of Alce gigantea provides rather scant information about the species, specifying only that this particular kind of 'fossil elk' comes from Ireland and is characterized by immense body size. It was first formally named as Alce gigantea by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in his Handbuch der Naturgeschichte in 1799, with Alce being a variant of Alces, the Latin name for the elk. The first scientific descriptions of the animal's remains were made by Irish physician Thomas Molyneux in 1695, who identified large antlers from Dardistown-which were apparently commonly unearthed in Ireland-as belonging to the elk (known as the moose in North America), concluding that it was once abundant on the island. Taxonomy Research history Skeletal reconstruction from 1856 It is not closely related to either living species called the elk, with it being widely agreed that its closest living relatives are fallow deer ( Dama). Its antlers, which can span 3.5 metres (11 ft) across are the largest known of any deer. The most recent remains of the species have been radiocarbon dated to about 7,700 years ago in western Russia.

Its range extended across Eurasia during the Pleistocene, from Ireland (where it is known from abundant remains found in bogs) to Lake Baikal in Siberia. The Irish elk ( Megaloceros giganteus), also called the giant deer or Irish deer, is an extinct species of deer in the genus Megaloceros and is one of the largest deer that ever lived. Megaceros giganteus latifrons Raven,1935.Cervus ( Megaceros) hibernicus Owen, 1844.Cervus megaceros irlandicus Fischer, 1838.Cervus euryceros (Aldrovandi, 1621), Hibbert, 1830.

Name of a male elk