A RARE AND NOTABLY LARGE EXAMPLE OF THE SKULL AND ANTLERS OF AN 'IRISH ELK' (Megalocerus giganteus), LATE PLEISTOCENE
of characteristic form with curved and splayed antlers, each sporting ten projecting tines (the skull lacking its teeth and a small portion of the left of its rostrum, and the left antler restored distally)
305.0 cm; 120 in

Provenance
A British ancestral collection

The so called 'Irish Elk', Megaloceras giganteus (Blumenbach 1799), takes its popular name from the fact that the bulk of its remains come from the peat-bogs of Ireland. The animal was, however, widely distributed throughout Eurasia. It was not in fact an elk but an unusually large form of Old World Deer, perhaps related to the present-day Fallow Deer. It lived in the latter part of the Pleistocene period (2,588,000 to 117,000 years before the present) and became extinct around the end of the last Ice Age (about 400,000 years BP).

Antlers like these belonged to males who used them both for display and for ritual fighting with others of their sex. Some of the largest males reached a height of about 2.0 metres (6.9 ft) at the shoulders and has a antlers measuring 3.6 metres (12 ft) across.

Most known finds of the 'Irish Elk' were made in the 18th and 19th centuries when peat was dug by hand. With the mechanical methods of digging employed today, the possibility of excavating intact specimens has greatly diminished.