#giantdeer — Public Fediverse posts

🦌🦥🐴🐘🐪 For #FossilFriday — Megaloceros giganteus, the Irish elk, which I was able to visit in June. Specimen USNM 7051 is masterfully mounted at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

The mount features a massive steel armature to support its nearly 3.4–3.6 meter antler spread. Studies show Megaloceros dropped and regrew its antlers each year.
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#pleistocene #megalocerosgiganteus #paleontology #iceage #giantdeer #citizenscience Skull mount photos credit: NMNH/Loren Ybarrondo

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

In 2024 I designed the Ice Age Giants coin series, for The Royal Mint and the Natural History Museum, London. The coloured silver coins came with acrylic presentation blocks, here's my giant deer block artwork.

#SciArt #SciComm #PaleoArt #PalaeoArt #IceAge #GiantDeer #Megaloceros #GiantIrishElk #IrishElk #Deer #Palaeontology #Paleontology #Coins #CoinCollecting

Today's #megafauna is the #GiantDeer! Also commonly known as the Irish Elk due to its prevalance of fossils in Ireland, Megaloceros giganteus actually lived all over Eurasia. Emerging 400,000 years ago, It stood 7 feet tall at the shoulder and sported a 12-foot-wide pair of antlers. It went extinct 8,000 years ago, as changing climates limited its food sources--and also the dietary availability of minerals required to regrow its enormous antlers every year.

The giant deer's recent extinction means that it coexisted with modern humans, who painted it on cave walls in the South of France. These paintings show coloration in a way that fossil remains cannot. The giant deer had dark fur, a white underside, and a ring of black around its neck with stripes along its sides--a fact that we know thanks to ancient artists.