Can anyone please tell me about irish deer with few images

Question

Can anyone please tell me about irish deer with few images

Answer 1

The Irish Elk or Giant Deer, Megaloceros giganteus was a species of Megaloceros and one of the largest deer that ever lived. Its range extended across Eurasia, from Ireland to east of Lake Baikal, during the Late Pleistocene. The latest known remains of the species have been carbon dated to the early Holocene about 7,700 years ago.Its old common name Irish Elk is misleading. Although large numbers of skeleton have been found in Irish bogs, the animal was not exclusively Irish, and neither was it closely related to either of the living species currently called elk; for this reason, the name "Giant Deer" is preferred in more recent publications. Megaloceros giganteus appeared for the first about 400,000 years ago. It evolved possibly from M. antecedens. The earlier taxon — sometimes considered a paleosubspecies M. giganteus antecedens — is similar but had more compact antlers.

The Irish Elk stood about 2.1 metres (6.9 ft) tall at the shoulders, and it had the largest antlers of any known cervid (a maximum of 3.65 m (12.0 ft) from tip to tip and weighing up to 40 kilograms (88 lb)). A significant collection of M. giganteus skeletons can be found at the Natural History Museum in Dublin.

Fossil range: Middle to Late Pleistocene



Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia



Phylum: Chordata



Class: Mammalia



Order: Artiodactyla



Family: Cervidae



Genus: †Megaloceros



Species: †M. giganteus



Binomial name

†Megaloceros giganteus

(Blumenbach, 1799)

Synonyms

†Megaceros giganteus

†Megaloceros giganteus giganteus

Answer 2

photos:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Megal...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Megal...

http://www.celticconnectionsradio.org/we...

The Irish Elk, Megaloceros, is misnamed, for it is neither exclusively Irish nor is it an elk. It is a giant extinct deer, the largest deer species ever, that stood up to seven feet at the shoulder (2.1 meters), with antlers spanning up to 12 feet (3.65 meters). The Irish elk evolved during the glacial periods of the last million years, during the Pleistocene Epoch. It ranged throughout Europe, northern Asia and northern Africa, and a related form is known from China. 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. The skull on display at the old UC Museum of Paleontology came from such a locality, 18 miles north of Dublin. Such skulls, with their enormous racks of antlers, adorn the walls of castles and hunting lodges throughout Ireland. On the other hand, the complete skeleton pictured at the top of the page, on display at the Paleontological Institute in Moscow, was found at the other end of Europe, near the Russian town of Sapozhka.

Unable to adapt to the subartic conditions of the last glaciation or the marked transition that occured after the final retreat of the ice sheet, the largest deer that ever lived became extinct, the last one in Ireland dying around 11,000 years ago. Megaloceros may have possibly survived in continental Europe into historic times.

Beyond its arresting size and singular appearance, the giant deer is of great significance to paleontologists because of the way in which the animal has become involved in evolutionary debates down through the years.

In the words of Dr. Thomas Molyneux, the first scientist to describe the Irish elk:

That no real species of living creatures is so utterly extinct, as to be lost entirely out of the World, since it was first created, is the opinion of many naturalists; and 'tis grounded on so good a principle of Providence taking care in general of all its animal productions, that it deserves our assent.

Molyneux erroneously identified the Irish elk with the American moose, while others thought the Irish elk was identical with the European reindeer. Not until 1812 did the great French scientist Georges Cuvier document that the Irish elk, along with other fossil vertebrates such as the mammoth, did not belong to any living species of mammal. Cuvier's study of the Irish elk was a key part of the documentation that extinction had happened in the past.

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