AN EXCLUSIVE NEW PORTRAIT OF THE IRISH ELK – A SHUKERNATURE PICTURE OF THE DAY

 

A dramatic, previously-unpublished portrait of an adult male Irish elk aka the giant deer Megaloceros giganteus (© Wayne Patton)

They say that good things come in pairs, so after the very favourable response recently received by my first ShukerNature Picture of the Day posted by me for quite some time (click here to access it), without further ado I am very happy to proffer a second one right now. Namely, the dramatic and exceedingly impressive but previously-unpublished portrait by American scholar/wildlife artist Wayne Patton (kindly forwarded to me earlier this year upon his behalf by his daughter, Alison Fielding) of one of prehistory's most spectacular mammals – the Irish elk, also known very aptly as the giant deer, and scientifically as Megaloceros giganteus.

Famed for the adult male's immense antlers, this awe-inspiring species was traditionally believed to have become extinct throughout its Eurasian distribution range during the Pleistocene epoch, i.e. prior to the onset of the Holocene, approximately 10,600 years ago. However, within my book In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995), I presented some intriguing evidence for its possible survival into the early Holocene (including mention of a mysterious, still-unidentified European beast named the schelk or shelk that may allude to Holocene representatives of Megaloceros).

Moreover, some years later, as I duly updated in a ShukerNature article (click here) as well as in my subsequent book Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors (2016), conclusive evidence for this species' Holocene survival in two widely separate Eurasian localities – the Isle of Man off the British mainland, and western Siberia in far-eastern Russia – was indeed obtained.

Inspired by my writings as well as those of many others dealing with this magnificent species, together with all manner of artistic representations of it, including cave paintings, and being an accomplished artist himself, Wayne decided to prepare his own entirely original reconstruction of its likely appearance in life, and when it was complete he very kindly offered me the opportunity to reproduce it exclusively on ShukerNature, which I was only too happy to accept. And so, showcased above as a wonderful ShukerNature Picture of the Day, is Wayne's stunning adult male Megaloceros painting, together with his verbatim account below of how he came to prepare it, his influences, and personal thoughts and ideas concerning Megaloceros, presented once again with his kind permission.

[Incidentally, please note that Wayne is using the term 'shelk' in his account merely as a common name for Megaloceros, rather than claiming a direct link between the latter deer and the mysterious still-unidentified beast of that name.]

 

One of Charles R. Knight's classic Irish elk paintings (public domain)

My name is Wayne Patton, I am a botanist and soil scientist by training and experience. I worked a career for the US Forest Service. I also worked in Mexico, Canada, and collaborated with groups from Romania, and Israel. I am a big game hunter and I took game with ancient systems like the bow and arrow and atlatl darts. I also tanned my own hide and made all manner of leather goods like saddle, tack, etc… Art has been a hobby for as long as I can remember. Now I am too old to hunt, so I spend a lot of time painting and selling my work through several galleries. I got very interested in the Megaloceros giganteus (shelk) through both my hunting and art experiences. I decided to paint a bull shelk as exampled above, starting with photos of mounted skeleton in museums in Ireland, Germany, and Scotland. There are even a couple mounted skeletons in the US that were obtained from Ireland. I fleshed out the bones based on my art experience as well as butchering big game animals like the American elk as well as mule deer, goats, sheep, and some African animals like the kudu. This part was easy, however, virtually all paintings of shelks by Charles R. Knight, who did early work for the Chicago Museum of Natural History, as well as the paintings available on the internet, are sourced from the zoo, mostly, red deer and American elk. The artists painted these fat animals that are standing around at half-mast from eating the wrong diet and being trapped, and then showing them with the giant horns of the giant shelk. Perhaps the best artwork is by the current great Dutch painter Rien Poortvliet [but] he copied the colors of the red deer and missed key anatomical features like the Adams apple and shoulder hump of the real shelk. What about the color? All paintings seem to be copies of the red deer and American or Mongolian elk – is this correct?

I thought not, so I did a bunch of research to find out if any information exists and I stumbled on to a fabulous book called The Nature of Paleolithic Art by Dr R. Dale Guthrie, who was a professor at the University of Alaska. He visited caves in France, Northern Spain and Italy, as well as museums containing engravings of animals on rocks, bones, and ivory from sites in Europe. This formed a basis for his reconstruction of the bull and cow shelks. He also did a lot of work comparing Pleistocene cave art with animals that survived the Pleistocene extinctions like the Chamois, the Reindeer and the Muskox and found this art to be very accurate and can be relied upon to help make decisions about color and animal appearance. The early people lived with the animals and were keen observers and used their knowledge to hunt them, maybe hastened extinction in some cases. So, I used my firsthand knowledge of using skeletal remains to flesh out realistic animal anatomy, and I used most of Dr R. Dale Guthrie’s conclusions from his experience looking at Pleistocene art to get the best color information. My try at a painting of the Bull Shelk is enclosed. 

Give me feedback of what you all think!

Also, use Amazon on the internet to track down copies of the book I used for reference (The Nature of Paleolithic Art).

Also, have a look at Rien Poortvliet in his book A Journey to The Ice Age (mammoths and other animals of the wild).

Now, back to some ideas of why many shelk remains and those of perhaps of red deer or European elk (American Moose) have holes knocked in the top of their skulls. These animals were herded in to marl pits and peat bogs where they became mired and trapped after which early people, especially in Ireland, went out and killed them where they were. Then they butchered out the best cuts of meat including the heart, liver, and tongues. Along with the brains, all of which were considered delicacies as I have on occasion. Use the 'Meat Eater' series on Netflix as a reference. The main use for brains, however, was not eating even though they are good! The primary reason for use is stabilizing and tanning leather, as I have done also. Leather has been used since the Pleistocene to make all kinds of clothing, gear and weapons. Use of brains or urine can be a smelly operation. 

 

Life-sized statue of an adult male Megaloceros on display at Crystal Palace, London, originally created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins during the 1850s (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Wayne has raised some very interesting points here. In particdular, it is certainly true that observing cave paintings can offer various visual clues to the physical appearance of prehistoric beasts that cannot be procured from fossils alone. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the apparent presence of striped markings on the body of the cave lion, as depicted in cave paintings of this extinct felid. So it is very significant that Wayne's Megaloceros painting has incorporated information encapsulated in these early firsthand eyewitness artworks.

Additionally, Wayne's information concerning the use of brains for tanning leather does indeed offer at least a partial explanation for the skull holes observed in Megaloceros remains that I documented in my first Prehistoric Survivors book and subsequently reiterated in my second one as well as my ShukerNature article. And as it was entirely new to me, this information is very welcome.

In short, I am delighted to be able to share with you Wayne's extremely striking, wholly original interpretation of what the adult male Megaloceros may have looked like in life, and his input to what is known about the use by human hunters of the brains extracted from the skulls of  butchered deer that may well have applied to this prehistoric species.

Once again, I thank Wayne most sincerely for permitting me to share all of this here on ShukerNature, and also his daughter Alison for kindly making contact with me in order to bring Wayne's work to my attention.

For an extensive coverage of possible and definite examples of Megaloceros post-Pleistocene survival, be sure to check out my book Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors.

THE DINOSAURS OF CRYSTAL PALACE - VISITING LONDON'S LOST WORLD. Part 3: THE RAVAGES OF TIME, AND AN AMERICAN DREAM DESTROYED

 

The dream that died – a 19^th-Century engraving depicting Hawkins's planned Palaeozoic Museum for New York City; how magnificent it would have been (public domain)

In Parts 1 and 2 of this ShukerNature blog article (click here and here to access them), we paid a virtual, verbal visit to the ancient mammals and especially the enormous dinosaurs and other prehistoric herpetological creatures that are immortalized at Dinosaur Court in Crystal Palace Park, southeast London, via a series of artistically magnificent (albeit nowadays palaeontologically inaccurate) statues.

These were the first such statues ever created – dating back to 1853/4 – and were reconstructed by eminent British sculptor and artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins under the guidance of Britain's foremost zoologist and palaeontologist at that time, Prof. Sir Richard Owen. Today, we turn our attention to the ongoing peril faced by these monumental wonders from a deadly combination of environmental and vandal-induced vicissitudes, as well as recalling Hawkins's tragically ill-fated American adventure.

 

Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (public domain)

In recent times, the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs have hit the news headlines for a variety of different reasons – some good, some not so good. Sadly, the most notable instance falls into the latter category. In May 2020, media reports worldwide revealed the shocking news that the nose and jaw tips of the magnificent Megalosaurus dinosaur statue had broken off. Photos accompanying these reports presented in stark close-up detail the severity of the damage, but opinions were mixed as to its cause. The Metropolitan Police were treating it as vandalism (and there are plenty of precedents with these statues to explain this view), whereas some historians noted that the nose and jaw tips had broken off along pre-existing fracture lines, thus suggesting that it may have happened naturally.

Indeed, when I read the reports I was reminded of a brief but prophetic observation made in a Tetrapod Zoology blog article of 11 December 2018 by British palaeontologist Dr Darren Naish following his visit to Dinosaur Court in September 2018 during its annual Open Day weekend there in which visitors were allowed the rare privilege of stepping forth onto the actual islands where Hawkins's statues stand, thereby enabling them to be viewed at much closer range than is normally possible. In his article, he stated: "…sections of the megalosaur’s nose look like they could fall off at any moment".

 

Hawkins's monumental Megalosaurus statue, photographed by me during my visit to Crystal Palace Park on 22 April 2010, when its nose and jaw tips were still intact (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Happily, however, in May 2021 Hawkins's Megalosaurus statue was restored to its former glory when it received a specially-created 'prosthetic jaw' and 22 teeth. The intricate restoration work that had created and fitted them had been financed by a grant from Historic England's Culture Recovery Fund plus support from Bromley Council and donations generated via fundraising carried out by the charity FOCPD – Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs (more about this sterling organization later).

Certainly, following direct outdoor exposure to the elements for almost 170 years, many of Hawkins's statues, especially the larger ones, sport a distressing array of fractures, fissures, cracks, and breaks, and are in danger of losing toes, tails, teeth, and antlers. The distal region of the tail of his Hylaeosaurus dinosaur statue, for example, is already severed from the remainder of it. And at much the same time as the Megalosaurus disfigurement took place in May 2020, the antlers of the two Irish elk stags were also damaged, although this may have been due to the prevailing high winds.

 

Also snapped by me during my 2010 visit to Crystal Palace Park were these three photographs of Hawkins's two magnificent Irish elk stags with still-intact antlers (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Ironically, less than three months previously, in late February 2020, Historic England had announced that the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs were being added to its Heritage at Risk Register.

Speaking of Hylaeosaurus: many years after its statue had been created by Hawkins, the head either fell off of its own accord or had to be removed because its great weight was causing the statue's neck to snap (accounts differ), and a lightweight fibreglass replica was added in its place. Happily, however, the original head was preserved, and can still be seen, mounted upon a special inset plaque on the ground, but sited some distance away from the rest of this statue.

 

The mounted original head of Hawkins's Hylaeosaurus statue (© MrsEllacott/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)

In my view, however, undoubtedly the most devastating damage wrought upon any of Hawkins's Crystal Palace statues was suffered by the pair of smaller, Oolite pterosaurs mentioned by me yesterday in Part 2 of this ShukerNature blog article. After being on display in addition to the more famous larger pair of pterosaurs for approximately 80 years, they were destroyed sometime during the 1930s; it has been claimed that they were used as target practice when the grounds of Crystal Palace Park were being temporarily utilized as barracks. During the major restoration work that took place at Dinosaur Court in 2002, however, a gorgeous pair of golden-gleaming fibreglass replicas were installed, having been specially created by sculptor John Warne in consultation with geologist Peter Doyle and Morton Partnership. Tragically, however, they were heinously destroyed just three years later, in 2005, when vandals kicked them over and also stole their smashed fragments.

Nothing more was heard about the Oolite pterosaur replicas for almost a decade, until a blog article by Joe Cain uploaded on 18 July 2014 to the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs website sensationally revealed that their fragments had been discovered just a week previously. Although for security reasons their location was not disclosed, Joe stated that he and two colleagues had been given special access to the fragments, which enabled them to be counted and their condition assessed. Sadly, most were in poor condition, but he felt that there was enough for future work to be initiated at some stage. As for the two larger, Cretaceous pterosaurs, they have suffered a degree of damage too, including much of the long slender jaws of one of them having broken off in recent years (I was fortunate enough to see both of them fully intact back in 2010).

 

A 19th-Century illustration of Crystal Palace Park's Dinosaur Court, which depicts the original pair of small, subsequently-destroyed Oolite pterosaurs, arrowed (public domain)

Yet even the desecration of the Oolite pterosaurs almost pales into insignificance when compared to the nightmare of what happened to all of Hawkins's New York statues. Despite the initial success of his Dinosaur Court at London's Crystal Palace Park, the cost of the statues' creation had been prohibitive (approximately £13,750 – an enormous sum back in the 1850s). Consequently, in mid-1855 the Directors of the Crystal Palace Company, which had purchased the palace itself, had funded its removal from Hyde Park and its reassembling at Penge following the end of the Great Exhibition, and had also financed Hawkins's creation of all of the statues there, refused to provide him with any further funding to reconstruct some additional statues of extinct Cenozoic beasts that he'd wanted to display on the Court's Tertiary Island.

These were believed to include New Zealand's ostrich-like giant moa Dinornis, the Mauritius dodo, the antlered giraffid Sivatherium, a South American glyptodont (a giant armadillo-like armoured mammal with a fearsome mace-like tail), some snakes and turtles, plus a woolly mammoth, and at least one other prehistoric pachyderm too (variously claimed to be a Mastodon or a Deinotherium).

An amusing cartoon in an issue of the English satirical magazine Punch from 1855, lampooning the greatly-promoted educational benefit of Hawkins's Crystal Palace Park dinosaur statues (public domain)

Nevertheless, buoyed by the success of his existing statues at Crystal Park Palace, Hawkins subsequently launched into an even more ambitious project following a transatlantic invitation sent to him in May 1868 from Charles Green, the administrator of the Board of Commissioners of Central Park in New York City, USA. Green was well aware of how lucrative and educational the Crystal Palace dinosaurs had proved to be, attracting each year numerous paying visitors anxious to gaze upon and learn all about these prehistoric goliaths. So he offered Hawkins the opportunity to establish in Central Park a comparable attraction, but this time in the form of a unique museum that would house a diverse range of new life-sized statues, with especial emphasis upon prehistoric creatures of the New World.

Hawkins readily agreed to do so, dubbing this major new project the Palaeozoic Museum. Among the statues that he planned to produce for it were ground sloths, glyptodonts, mastodonts, and the American plesiosaur Elasmosaurus, as well as bipedal representations of the American herbivorous duck-billed dinosaur Hadrosaurus and carnivorous tyrannosaurid dinosaur Laelaps [now Dryptosaurus], plus the Eurasian giant deer or Irish elk Megaloceros giganteus, a species that he had already constructed for London's Dinosaur Court, and also New Zealand's giant moa Dinornis, which he had been prevented from constructing for the Court.

 

Ensconced within New York City's Central Park, Hawkins's studio in 1869, containing Hadrosaurus and Irish elk statues (public domain)

Hawkins set up a workshop studio in Central Park, and by early 1871 he had created several statues and the moulds for several more when disaster struck. One fateful evening in spring of that same year, a team of brutish despoilers broke into his studio, with what has traditionally been believed to be the blessing of 'Boss' William Marcy Tweed – an extremely rich, influential mobster in all but name. Tweed had stealthily gained control over much of New York City, including the finances of the Park, having infiltrated its Board via several corrupt Commissioners loyal to him, but according to traditional belief he had no intention of funding the museum's establishment (being neither a fan of Hawkins in particular nor of fossils in general). So his covertly-hired team's specified task was to smash, destroy, remove, and bury every statue, mould, and sketch that they could find there – a despicable crime that they carried out like palaeontological Luddites with diabolical zeal and efficiency, duly ending any prospect of Hawkins and Green founding their Palaeozoic Museum.

[UPDATE: You will have noticed, however, that when blaming Tweed for this destruction, I have twice highlighted that this is the traditional belief regarding it. In reality, however, a revelatory re-examination of the salient facts, published in a May 2023 Proceedings of the Geologists' Association paper authored by Victoria Coules of Bristol's Department of History of Art and palaeontologist Prof. Michael Benton of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, exposes the culprit not to have been Tweed at all. Instead, the villain in question was none other than Henry Hilton, Treasurer and VP of Central Park. It turns out that Hilton made the fatal decision at a specific meeting that the statues and moulds should be destroyed, and it was he who sent out the very next day the team responsible for doing so. But why? Apparently, Hilton was a very strange, eccentric character who is already known to historians for a number of other bizarre, senseless, disreputable acts, so this wanton vandalism is entirely in keeping with his notorious reputation.]

 

An oil painting by Hawkins depicting New Zealand giant moas, Dinornis (public domain)

Returning to England dejected and rejected, Hawkins spent the remainder of his days painting wildlife, dying in 1894, his American dream shattered, unfulfilled. Happily, however, in London's Crystal Palace Park his visionary creations live on (in all but the most literal sense!).

Moreover, today they have a major ally and protector, in the shape of a superb charity organization called Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs or FOCPD (be sure to visit its official website here for full details concerning its founding, its aims, volunteering, donating, and so much more). FOCPD is enthusiastically supported by an eclectic range of members united by their love for Hawkins's iconic creations, drawing not just from the scientific community but from every walk of life. One of FOCPD's biggest supporters, who has extensively publicized on social media its worthy cause, is none other than Hampstead-born Saul Hudson, better known today as celebrated Guns N' Roses rock guitarist Slash.

 

Slash (© Raph_PH – GunsNRoses160617-41/Wikpedia – CC BY 2.0 licence)

FOCPD was specifically founded in 2013 to promote the longterm conservation of these statues plus the larger surrounding geological site, and its latest in a long line of major successes since then has been to raise the very substantial sum of money (approximately £70,000) required to design, construct, and then safely secure in place a robust lockable swing bridge, dubbed the Dino Bridge. This will exclusively enable FOCPD's workers, volunteers, and others involved in vital restoration and maintenance work here to access the islands whenever needed, but at all other times it can be locked away to prevent would-be intruders and trespassers from using it to access these statue sanctuaries.

On 13 January 2021, the Dino Bridge was formally installed, thereby marking the beginning of a major new phase in FOCPD's ongoing objective of protecting and preserving Hawkins's priceless, irreplaceable legacy – and, in so doing, maintaining interest in it. This in turn ensures not only the continuing physical survival of his creations but also that their unique scientific, historical, and artistic significance is fully understood and appreciated by current and future generations.

 

A view of Dinosaur Court in London's Crystal Palace Park (© Dr Karl Shuker)

For what is all too often not realized (yet is absolutely crucial to remember here) is that whereas in comparison to today's currently-accepted palaeontological reconstructions of the prehistoric beasts represented by them, Hawkins's statues are undeniably inaccurate and thoroughly outdated, they are nonetheless exceedingly accurate representations of the very limited fossil remains and attendant knowledge concerning them that were available to him back when he created them almost 170 years ago. Indeed, it is even probably fair to say that relatively speaking, Hawkins's statues are actually more precise life restorations of the fossils available to him and Owen for study than today's life restorations are of the vast array of fossils available to modern-day sculptors and artists. This is because even such visually insignificant yet taxonomically highly significant features as tooth structure were diligently replicated by Hawkins from the fossils available to him for study. So, viewed from that perspective, i.e. strictly in context, his Victorian statues not only were the earliest but also may well be the most faithful three-dimensional reconstructions of dinosaurs and other antiquated animals ever created.

This is surely a most fitting testimonial to the man who was the very first person to resurrect like a veritable naturalist of necromancy the long-dead, long-buried monsters from the vast mausoleum of our world's hitherto-unsuspected prehistoric past.

 

A tenacious testament to a uniquely appealing twinning of science with art – Hawkins's pioneering palaeontological statues of various aquatic prehistoric creatures at Crystal Palace Park (© CGPGrey-Wikipedia – CC BY 3.0 licence)

For further details concerning the history of Hawkins's Dinosaur Court statues and for very extensive, meticulous analyses of their morphological accuracy when compared with our present-day knowledge of the prehistoric creatures that they are based upon, I heartily recommend Crystal Palace Dinosaurs: The Story of the World's First Prehistoric Sculptures (1994), a fascinating, lavishly-illustrated book written and researched by Steve McCarthy, designed and produced by Mick Gilbert; plus the excellent online blog of British palaeontologist and palaeoartist Mark Witton (click here to access it).

In addition, my sincere thanks for sharing with me all manner of interesting, pertinent information go to Sam Crehan, Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs (FOCPD), Mandy Holloway, Dr Darren Naish, Bob Skinner, and Sebastian Wang.

 

Crystal Palace Dinosaurs: The Story of the World's First Prehistoric Sculptures 

by Steve McCarthy and Mick Gilbert (© Steve McCarthy/Mick Gilbert – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

But above all, I wish to dedicate this comprehensive 3-part ShukerNature article to my late mother, Mary Shuker (1921-2013), whose fascination with animals inspired my own and whose ever-present encouragement and support were crucial in helping me to achieve my lifelong ambition of becoming a zoologist. Down through the years, she had heard me speak of the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs so often that when in 2010 I finally decided to brave the turmoil of London's traffic and pay them a long-promised visit at Penge, she was almost as keen to see them as I was. So naturally I took her with me, and when traversing the long and winding public pathway on the park 'mainland' that encircles their island sanctuaries, she enjoyed observing these immensely impressive statues just as much as I did.

Indeed, although during the five decades that we shared, Mom and I had travelled the world together, taking her with me to visit and view so many exotic sights that she had always wanted to see but had never thought that she would, the simple joy of our day among the dinosaurs of Crystal Palace will always remain one of my most treasured memories of our life together.

 

My mother Mary Shuker with Hawkins's majestic Megalosaurus and Megatherium statues in Crystal Palace Park's Dinosaur Court on 22 April 2010 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

God bless you Mom, thank you for being the best person I shall ever know – how I wish that you were still here, that you could read and enjoy this article of mine, and remember once again, as I am doing now, our happy time spent together in the company of its stately, stupendous subjects.

Finally: if you haven't already perused Parts 1 and 2 of this 3-part ShukerNature blog article on the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, please click here and here to do so.

 

'Jurassic Life of Europe', an 1877 oil painting by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (public domain)

 

 

THE LAST OF THE IRISH ELKS? - INVESTIGATING SOME MEGALOCEROS MYSTERIES

Spectacular Megaloceros painting (© Zdenek Burian)

One of the most spectacular members of the Eurasian Pleistocene megafauna was the Irish elk Megaloceros giganteus. Formally described in 1799, it is also aptly known as the giant deer, as its largest known representatives were only marginally under 7 ft tall at the shoulder and bore massive antlers spanning up to 12 ft, but did this magnificent species linger on into historic times?

Below is an account of mine devoted to this tantalising subject and dating back to 1995, when it appeared in my book In Search of Prehistoric Survivors. It is followed by various fascinating updates, including some significant palaeontological discoveries made since my book's publication but of great pertinence to the question of post-Pleistocene survival for this species.

But first – here is the relevant excerpt from my book:

The Irish elk Megaloceros giganteus was one of the largest species of deer that ever lived. It was also one of the most famous - on account of the male's enormous antlers, attaining a stupendous span of 12 ft and a weight of over 100 lb in some specimens. Sadly, its common name is misleading, as this impressive species is only very distantly related to the true elk (moose), and, far from being an Irish speciality, was prevalent throughout the Palaearctic Region, from Great Britain to Siberia and China.

Nonetheless, it is to Ireland that we must turn for the majority of clues regarding Megaloceros - because in contradiction to the accepted view that it died out here 10,600-11,000 years ago (just prior to the Holocene's commencement), certain accounts and discoveries from the Emerald Isle have tempted researchers to speculate that this giant deer may still have been alive here a mere millennium ago.

Restoration of the Irish elk, prepared in 1906 by Charles R. Knight (public domain)

According to accounts documented by H.D. Richardson in 1846, and reiterated by Edward Newman in the pages of The Zoologist, the ancient Irish used to hunt an extremely large form of black deer, utilising its skin for clothing, its flesh for food, and its milk for the same purposes that cow milk is used today. Supporting that remarkable claim is a series of bronze tablets discovered by Sir William Betham; inscribed upon them are details of how the ancient Irish fed upon the flesh and drank the milk of a great black deer.

These accounts resurfaced two decades later within an examination of the Irish elk's possible survival here into historic times by naturalist Philip Henry Gosse, in which he also documented an intriguing letter written by the Countess of Moira. Published in the Archaeologia Britannica, this letter recorded the finding of a centuries-old human body in a peat bog; the well-preserved body was completely clothed in garments composed of deer hair, which was conjectured to be that of the Irish elk.

Most interesting of all, however, was the discovery in 1846 by Dublin researchers Glennon and Nolan of a huge collection of animal bones surrounding an island in the middle of Lough Gûr - a small lake near Limerick. Among the species represented in it was the Irish elk, but of particular note was the condition of this species' skulls. Those lacking antlers each bore a gaping hole in the forehead, which seemed to have been made by some heavy, blunt instrument - recalling the manner of slaughtering cattle and other meat-yielding domestic animals with pole-axes, still practised by butchers in the mid-to-late 1800s. Conversely, this species' antlered skulls (one equipped with immensely large antlers) were undamaged.

Irish elk skeleton (Wikipedia/GNU General Public License)

Did this mean that the antler-less (i.e. female) Irish elks had actually been maintained in a domestic state by man in Ireland, as an important addition to his retinue of meat-producing species? Prof. Richard Owen sought to discount such speculation by stating that the mutilated skulls were in reality those of males, not females, and that the holes had resulted from their human killers wrenching the antlers from the skulls.

However, this was swiftly refuted by Richardson, whose experiments with fully-intact skulls of male Irish elks showed that when the antlers were wrenched off they either snapped at their bases, thereby leaving the skulls undamaged, or (if gripped at their bases when wrenched) ripped the skulls in half. On no occasion could he obtain the curious medially-sited holes exhibited by the Lough Gûr specimens. Clearly, therefore, these latter skulls were from female deer after all, explaining their lack of antlers - but what of the holes?

Irish elk depicted on a postage stamp issued by France in 2008 (© French Philatelic Bureau)

As Gosse noted in his coverage of Richardson's researches, it is significant that the skulls of certain known meat-yielding mammals present alongside the Megaloceros skulls at Lough Gûr had corresponding holes - and as Gosse very reasonably argued: "As it is evident that their demolition was produced by the butcher's pole-ax, why not that of the elk skulls?".

After presenting these and other accounts, Gosse offered the following conclusion:

"From all these testimonies combined, can we hesitate a moment in believing that the Giant Deer was an inhabitant of Ireland since its colonisation by man? It seems to me that its extinction cannot have taken place more than a thousand years ago. Perhaps at the very time that Caesar invaded Britain, the Celts in the sister isle were milking and slaughtering their female elks, domesticated in their cattle-pens of granite, and hunting the proud-antlered male with their flint arrows and lances. It would appear that the mode of hunting him was to chase and terrify him into pools and swamps, such as the marl-pits then were; that, having thus disabled him in the yielding bogs, and slain him, the head was cut off, as of too little value to be worth the trouble of dragging home...and that frequently the entire carcase was disjointed on the spot, the best parts only being removed. This would account for the so frequent occurrence of separate portions of the skeleton, and especially of skulls, in the bog-earth."

19^th-Century engraving of an Irish elk (public domain)

Although undeniably thought-provoking, the case of Megaloceros's persistence into historic times in Ireland as presented by the above-noted 19th Century writers has never succeeded in convincing me - for a variety of different reasons.

For instance, there is no conclusive proof that the large black deer allegedly hunted by the ancient Irish people really were surviving Megaloceros. Coat colour in the red deer Cervus elaphus is far more variable than its common name suggests; and, as is true with many other present-day species of sizeable European mammal, specimens of red deer dating from a few centuries ago or earlier tend to be noticeably larger than their 20th Century counterparts.

Similarly, the Lough Gûr skulls' ostensibly significant contribution to this case rests upon one major, fundamental assumption - that they are truly the skulls of Megaloceros specimens. But are they? Precise identification of fossil remains is by no means the straightforward task that many people commonly believe it to be.

Reconstruction of an Irish elk at Ulster Museum (© Bazonka/Wikipedia)

Perhaps the greatest of all mysteries associated with this case, however, is that subsequent investigations of Megaloceros survival in Holocene Ireland as specifically inspired by the researches of Gosse and company, and formally documented in the scientific literature, are conspicuous only by their absence. (In September 1938, A.W. Stelfox of Ireland's National Museum, in Dublin, did consider this subject, but without reference to any of the above accounts.) Yet if the case for such survival is really so compelling and conclusive, how can this investigative hiatus be accounted for?

Seeking an explanation for these assorted anomalies, I consulted mammalian palaeontologist Dr Adrian Lister [then at Cambridge University, England, now at London's Natural History Museum] - who has a particular interest in Megaloceros. Confirming my own suspicions, Dr Lister informed me that it is not unequivocally established that the female Lough Gûr skulls were from Megaloceros specimens, and he suggested that they might be those of female Alces alces, the true elk or moose, which did exist in Ireland for a time during the Holocene (though it is now extinct there). Certainly in general form and size, female Alces skulls seem similar to the Lough Gûr versions.

In contrast, Lister agreed that the enormous size of the antlers borne by the male Lough Gûr skulls indicated that these were bona fide Megaloceros skulls; but as he also pointed out, although their presence in the same deposits as the remains of known domesticated species is interesting, without careful stratigraphical evidence this presence cannot be accepted as conclusive proof of association between Megaloceros and man.

Irish elk depicted on a postage stamp issued by the Republic of Ireland (Eire) in 1999 (© An Post)

During his Megaloceros account, Gosse included some reports describing discoveries in Ireland of huge limb bones assumed to be from Megaloceros, which were so well-preserved (and hence recent?) that the marrow within them could be set alight, and thereby utilised as fuel by the peasantry, or even boiled to yield soup!

Yet once again, as I learnt from Dr Lister, these were not necessarily Megaloceros bones - especially as the limb bones of red deer, moose, and even cattle are all of comparable shape and form, and can only be readily distinguished from one another by osteological specialists (who do not appear to have been granted the opportunity to examine the bones in those particular 19th Century instances, and the bones were not preserved afterwards). Furthermore, on those occasions when exhumed bones used for fuel purposes have been professionally examined, none has been found to be from Megaloceros.

In conclusion: far from being proven, the case for post-Pleistocene survival of Megaloceros in Ireland is doubtful to say the least. Nevertheless, this is not quite the end of the trail. As noted by zoologist Dr Richard Lydekker, and more recently by palaeontologist Prof. Bjorn Kurten, the word 'Schelk', which occurred in the famous Nibelungenlied (Ring of the Nibelungs) of the 13th Century, has been considered by some authorities to refer to specimens of Megaloceros alive in Austria during historic times; other authorities, conversely, have suggested that a moose or wild stallion is a more plausible candidate.

Irish elk statue at Crystal Palace, London, originally created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins during the 1850s (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Whatever the answer to the above proves to be, far more compelling evidence for such survival was presented in 1937 by A. Bachofen-Echt of Vienna. He described a series of gold and bronze engravings on plates from Scythian burial sites on the northern coast of the Black Sea. Dating from 600-500 BC and now housed at the Berlin Museum, the engravings are representations of giant deer-like creatures, whose antlers are accurate depictions of Megaloceros antlers! Undeniable evidence at last for Holocene survival?

The enigma of these engravings has perplexed palaeontologists for decades, but now a notable challenge to their potential significance has been put forward by Dr Lister, who has provided a convincing alternative explanation - postulating that the engravings were not based upon living Megaloceros specimens, but rather upon fossil Megaloceros antlers, exhumed by the Bronze Age people. This interpretation is substantiated by the stark reality that out of the hundreds of Holocene sites across Europe from which fossil remains have been disinterred, not a single one has yielded any evidence of Megaloceros.

True, absence of uncovered Holocene remains of Megaloceros does not deny absolutely the possibility of Holocene persistence (after all, there are undoubtedly many European fossil sites of the appropriate period still awaiting detection and study). Yet unless some such finds are excavated, it now seems much more likely that, despite the optimism of Gosse and other Victorian writers, this magnificent member of the Pleistocene megafauna failed to survive that epoch's close after all, like many of its extra-large mammalian contemporaries elsewhere.

That was where the matter stood back in 1995 – but not any longer!

Irish elk lithograph from 1895 (public domain)

On 15 June 2000, a paper published in the scientific journal Nature and co-authored by Dr Lister revealed that a near-complete Megaloceros skeleton uncovered in the Isle of Man (IOM) and a fragmentary antler from southwest Scotland had recently been shown via radiocarbon dating to be only a little over 9000 years old, i.e. dating from just inside the Holocene epoch – the first unequivocal proof that this mighty deer did indeed survive beyond the Pleistocene.

Intriguingly, however, as also disclosed in this paper, the Isle of Man's Holocene specimen's skeleton was statistically smaller (by over two standard deviations from its mean) than all Irish Pleistocene counterparts also measured in this study, indicating a diminution in body size for Megaloceros as it entered the Holocene, at least on the Isle of Man. Conversely, the antlers for this specimen and also the Scottish antler were well within the Irish size range for adult males.

The Isle of Man separated from the British mainland around 10,000 years ago. Consequently, it may be that the decrease in body size recorded for the IOM specimen measured in this study (if typical and not merely a freak specimen) is a result of this island's relatively small size rather than a strictly chronological effect.

Irish elk statue at Berlin's Tierpark (© Markus Bühler)

But that is not all. On 7 October 2004, once again via a Nature paper, a team of researchers that included Dr Lister revealed via radiocarbon dating of uncovered skeletons that Megaloceros survived in western Siberia until at least circa 5000 BC, i.e. some 3000 years after the ice-sheets receded. Age-wise, these are currently the most recent Megaloceros specimens on record, and demonstrate that the Irish elk existed during the Holocene in two widely separate localities.

So who knows? Following these exciting finds, perhaps other Holocene specimens, and possibly some of even younger dates than those presently documented, are still awaiting scientific unfurling?

Also of note is that on 8 June 2015, the journal Science Reports published a paper from a research team co-headed by Dr Johannes Krause revealing that Megaloceros remains recovered from cave sites in the Swabian Jura (Baden-Württemberg, southern Germany) dated to 12,000 years ago. Until now, it had been believed that this giant deer species had become extinct in Central Europe prior to, rather than after, the Ice Age. Moreover, the DNA techniques used in identifying the remains as Megaloceros showed that this species is actually more closely related to the fallow deer Dama dama (as long believed in the past) than the red deer (as more recently assumed).

Early photograph of an Irish elk skeleton (public domain)

One final Megaloceros mystery: On 4 July of this year (2015), Hungarian cryptozoological blogger Orosz István posted a short but very interesting item about a supposed mythological beast that I had never heard of before – the hippocerf (a name combining the Greek for 'horse' with a derivation from the Latin for 'deer'). He stated that it was said to be half horse, half deer (hence its name) and, of particular interest, that some (unnamed) researchers believed that it was based upon a Megaloceros population surviving into historic times. Orosz had obtained his information from a brief entry on this creature that appears on the Cryptidz.Wikia.Com website.

Needless to say, I soon conducted some online research myself concerning this intriguing creature, but I was not exactly cheered by my findings. With the exception of the above-noted Cryptidz Wikia site and a few others giving only the barest information repeated one to another ad nauseam, plus some imaginative illustrations of it created by various artists on the deviantart.com site, the hippocerf seemed to be endemic to fantasy fighting and other fantasy-style game sites. On these sites, some of the fabulous creatures featured are bona fide mythological beasts but others are complete inventions, dreamed up exclusively for the games, with no basis whatsoever in world mythology. Hence I began to suspect that the hippocerf might be in the latter category, i.e. conceived entirely for fantasy fighting games.

Irish elk skeleton at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (© Jay BizarreZoo Cooney)

Indeed, apart from its very frequent appearances in Final Fantasy and other fantasy game sites and its popularity as a subject for drawing/painting on deviantart, all that I have been able to trace about the hippocerf online is that it supposedly has the hindquarters of a horse and the forequarters, neck, and antlered head of a deer, and that because of its dual nature, in heraldry it represents indecision or confusion. However, I have yet to find any confirmation of this claim from standard sources on heraldry online or elsewhere (I own several major works on this subject, and none contains any mention of the hippocerf). Nor have I uncovered the names of any of the researchers who have purportedly suggested that this distinctive creature may have derived from Megaloceros sightings in historic times.

As for a claim repeated on several websites that the last known hippocerf sighting was in around 600 AD by an early archaeologist called Gregor Ishlecoff, I traced this to a book entitled The Destineers' Journal of Fantasy Nations, authored by N.A. Sharpe and Bobby Sharpe, and self-published in 2009, which proved to be a fantasy novel aimed at teenagers! I also own a considerable number of bestiary-type books on mythological beasts, and again not one of them contains any information regarding the hippocerf.

A pair of moose, depicted in an illustration from 1900 (public domain)

In short, not very promising at all for the supposed reality of the hippocerf as a genuine (rather than a made-up) mythological beast. The only hope for its credibility is if a mention can be traced in an authentic bestiary pre-dating the coming of the internet and fantasy gaming (preferably one of the classic works from medieval or Renaissance times), or in some authoritative work on heraldry. If either or both of these possibilities result in positive info emerging, then it may be that the hippocerf was inspired by the imposing and somewhat equine form of the moose (which inhabited much of Central Europe until hunted into extinction in many parts there by the onset of the Middle Ages). To my mind, this seems like a more plausible option than the survival of Megaloceros into historic times in Europe (i.e. into much more recent times than even the circa 7000 BC date currently known for it there).

Having said that: I can't help but recall a certain noteworthy line from the Krause et al. paper of 8 June 2015 regarding the finding of post-Ice Age Megaloceros remains in Germany: "The unexpected presence of Megaloceros giganteus in Southern Germany after the Ice Age suggests a later survival in Central Europe than previously proposed". Interesting…

If anyone reading this present ShukerNature blog article has information on the hippocerf derived directly from heraldic or bestiary-type sources pre-dating the internet and fantasy-type gaming, I'd greatly welcome details.

Male nilghai depicted on a postage stamp issued in 2001 by Moldova (public domain)

Incidentally, the hippocerf should not be confused (but sometimes is - see below) with the hippelaphos (whose name also translates as 'horse-deer', but from the Greek for 'horse' and the Greek for 'deer'), which is a genuine creature of classical mythology.

Attempts to identify it with known animal species have been made down through the ages by many authorities, including Aristotle (whose account of it recalls a gnu), Cuvier (the Asian sambar deer Rusa unicolor), and 19^th-Century German zoologist Prof. Arend F.A. Wiegmann (the Indian nilghai Boselaphus tragocamelus).

Another possibility is Africa's roan antelope Hippotragus equinus, a decidedly horse-like species, as emphasised by its taxonomic binomial, as well as by its French name, antilope chevaline ('horse-like antelope').

A very horse-like specimen of the roan antelope (© Dr Karl Shuker)

In the original Latin version of Aristotle's work, the hippelaphos is termed the hippocervus (being renamed the hippelaphos in the English translation version), a name that is sometimes applied to the hippocerf on various internet sites. Indeed, I wonder if the hippocerf may be nothing more than the hippelaphos (aka hippocervus) distorted and exaggerated by online invention, such as the unsourced claim that some researchers believe it may be based upon a Megaloceros population surviving into historic times. Ah well, you know what they say - I read it on the internet, so it must be true!

This ShukerNature blog article is an updated excerpt from my book In Search of Prehistoric Survivors.

'In the Meadows – Pleistocene Age' – an adult male Irish elk taking centre-stage in this stunning painting from 1904 by John Guille Millais (public domain)