The Irish Elk (Megaloceros)

Scotland’s claims to the extinct Irish Elk, or giant deer Megaloceros, lie in fossilised remains found at Maybole in Ayrshire in 1837.

Preserved in peat and boulder clays, the Maybole remains and other Irish Elk fossils in Scotland date from both before and after the Ice Age, making Megaloceros one of the most geologically recent fossils in Scotland. The Irish Elk was one of the largest deer ever to walk the planet, standing at over two metres in height with huge antlers spanning 9 feet in diameter. Although not confirmed, it is thought that human activity may have played a significant role in the extinction of the creature. There are several examples of Megaloceros skeletons in museums, both at the Royal Museum in Edinburgh and in Ireland.

Irish Elk - Megaloceros

Irish Elk cranium with antlers from William Hunter’s collection in the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow.

Scotland’s fossil record for the last 66 million years is sparse thanks to the Ice Ages, when ice sheets removed most of those layers of time from our rock record. This makes rare finds like Megaloceros especially important. This enormous deer wandered ancient Scotland from around a million years ago until less than 8000 years ago, and was part of a whole ecosystem of Pleistocene animals that have now disappeared, including polar bears, wolves, horses and lynx. We still don’t know for certain why many of these animals became extinct, but a combination of climate change and hunting by humans is likely to have contributed. How sad to have lost such magnificent creatures! It’s a lesson for us all when facing today’s ecosystem crises – we can look to the past to understand the mechanisms of extinction in the modern world, and why we need to act fast to prevent further extinctions from taking place.

Dr Elsa Panciroli, palaeontologist and author