Megaloceros Fossil Jaw Irish Elk Giant Deer Prehistoric Megafauna Pleistocene Quaternary Collection (7)

Description

Origin : Holland (North Sea)

Geological era : Late Pleistocene

Age : 30,000 - 50,000 years

Size : 156 gr - cm 15.7 x 9.6 x 2.9

Mandible Fossil Bone Giant Deer cm 15.7 x 9.6 x 2.9 - gr 156 Prehistoric Irish Elk Megaloceros giganteus Megafauna Extinct Artiodactyl Mammals Pleistocene Quaternary Collecting Paleontology Museum.

Interesting collectible fossil find, proximal maxillary portion of the lower hemiarch of the mandible, with details of the structure of the spongy bone tissue. Only a piece, as in photos.

The Giant Deer or Irish Elk was a species of extinct Megalocero, one of the largest cervids that lived in Eurasia during the Pleistocene and Holocene eras. Megaloceros giganteus first appeared about 400,000 years ago, perhaps evolving from M. antecedens.
It is famous for its surprising size (more than two meters at the withers) and with an antler that reached up to three and a half meters in width and weighed up to 40 kilograms (the name of the species Megaloceros means precisely: with giant horns).
Although it is sometimes called Irish moose, because many bone remains of this animal have been found in some Irish bogs, it was not only widespread in Ireland and was not even an ancestor of any of the modern moose species.
Giant deer are among the most characteristic inhabitants of what can be defined as the Pleistocene megafauna together with the better known mammoths. Until a few years ago it was believed that the extinction of the giant deer occurred towards the end of the ice age, in the late Pleistocene, therefore more than 10,000 years ago. Instead, the recent discovery of some fossil remains of two Megaloceros giganteus on the Isle of Man and in south-west Scotland has led scientists to postpone the date of their extinction by more than a thousand years. These results prove that this species, which survived until the end of the ice age, had also roamed the Earth in the middle of the Holocene, when the Earth's temperature was more temperate. This discovery supports the thesis of those who maintain that the extinction of the Ice Age megafauna was not only caused by climate change but also by the increasingly efficient and perfected hunting of man in those times (overkill hypothesis). According to this theory, it was man who decreed the extinction of an entire category of mammals that had dominated the planet for hundreds of thousands of years. This is a suggestive thesis which, however, still needs to be supported by sufficient scientific evidence.
A large collection of giant deer skeletons is found in the natural history wing of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. From some cave paintings in France, it appears that the giant deer had a hump similar to that of the modern camel.