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A dramatic, previously-unpublished portrait of an adult male Irish elk aka the giant deer Megaloceros giganteus (© Wayne Patton)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 Namely, the dramatic and exceedingly impressive but previously-unpublished portrait by American scholar/wildlife artist Wayne Patton (kindly forwarded to me earlier this year upon his behalf by his daughter, Alison Fielding) of one of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 1: MEGALOSAURUS, MEGALOCEROS, MEGATHERIUM, AND MORE!

 

Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins's Crystal Palace studio in 1853, containing some of his completed statues of prehistoric 'monsters' (public domain)

On 22 April 2010, I finally fulfilled a lifelong ambition, by visiting a veritable Lost World of dinosaurs and other monstrous members of our planet's prehistoric fauna. Yet this particular Lost World was located not atop some lofty South American mesa, or concealed amid some remote African rainforest. Instead, it was cosily ensconced within a leafy, tranquil setting not very far from the frantic hustle and bustle of central London. I refer of course to Crystal Palace Park, and its spectacular array of life-sized (albeit far from life-like) palaeontological reconstructions, which date back to Victorian times and include the earliest representations of dinosaurs ever created.

Today, they are considered by many to be nothing more than antiquated curiosities, at least as far as their direct relevance to modern-day fossil studies is concerned. Yet in historical terms, their significance is immense, as is their aesthetic value as stunning works of art. So here via this comprehensive 3-part ShukerNature blog article, I invite you all to pay a virtual, verbal visit with me to these extraordinary creations, and uncover their fascinating histories and mysteries.

 

Standing in front of the iconic Megalosaurus statue in the Dinosaur Court at Crystal Palace Park, London, on 22 April 2010 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

I first learnt of the Crystal Palace dinosaurs from one particular animal book that (along with many others) my mother had bought me when I was a child, back in the 1960s. A compilation of chapters written by several different authors, and which I still own today as a fond reminder of my early years, it was entitled Children's Encyclopedia of Knowledge: Book of Nature, and had been published by Collins in 1967. I'd also been bought a number of books devoted specifically to dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts. Yet whereas the respective reconstructions in these latter books of the various famous dinosaurs' likely appearance in life all compared well with one another, those in my Book of Nature were radically different. This notable discrepancy puzzled me for some time until I finally uncovered the answer.

The dinosaur illustrations in the above-named book were photographs of enormous statues on display in southeast London's Crystal Palace Park, but they more closely resembled giant, misshapen lizards than the very distinctive, familiar forms depicted in all of my dinosaur books. Back in those far-distant pre-internet times, it took a while for me to learn more about them, but during the mid-1970s I bought Adrian J. Desmond's bestselling book The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs (1975), which included a fascinating history of how and when the first dinosaur remains had been discovered, and it was here that the secret of Crystal Palace Park's mystifying monsters was at last revealed to me.

 

Vintage engraving of the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, for the Great Exhibition, 1851 (public domain)

The year 1851 saw Central London's Hyde Park host the world-famous Great Exhibition (1 May-15 October), which was a huge exposition showcasing the finest achievements of British industry as well as including displays from other countries around the world too. It was housed within a spectacular, palatial exhibition centre designed by Sir Joseph Paxton and composed extensively of glass, which duly became known as the Crystal Palace. Although initially intended to be merely a temporary creation, so popular did this very imposing, impressive edifice prove to be that when the Great Exhibition ended, instead of being demolished the Crystal Palace was purchased for £50,000 by the new, specially-created Crystal Palace Company, which then paid for it to be dismantled and moved in its entirety from Hyde Park to Penge, situated on the lower slopes of Sydenham Hill, southeast London.

Here it was painstakingly reassembled and became the focus of a new, specially-designed park, with beautiful landscaped gardens, lakes, statues, and many other eyecatching features. These included what became its most famous attractions – the incredible statues of huge dinosaurs and other exotic-looking prehistoric animals created by English sculptor and artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807-1894).

 

Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins sitting (Maull & Polyblank Wellcome/Wikipedia – CC BY 4.0 licence)

Despite having become extinct many millions of years ago, dinosaurs are among the most popular of all animals in today's world, their diverse imagery appearing everywhere, from books and films to toys and postage stamps, as well as being represented by countless displays in museums worldwide. All of which makes it all the more surprising, therefore, that although dinosaur fossils had been dug up by geologists and excavators for centuries, it was not until 1824 when the first dinosaur was scientifically named.

This was the 25-30-ft-long carnivorous theropod Megalosaurus ('big lizard'), a saurischian or lizard-hipped dinosaur, by Oxford University's Professor of Mineralogy and Geology, the Reverend William Buckland, based upon fossil remains unearthed in Oxfordshire, and originally thought to indicate a creature measuring around 40 ft long. A year later saw the naming of a second dinosaur form, the herbivorous 30-40-ft ornithopod Iguanodon, based upon remains found in the Tilgate Forest area of West Sussex by English palaeontologist Gideon Mantell and initially deemed by him to have measured around 60 ft long. This was followed in 1833 by a third, Hylaeosaurus, a herbivorous spiny ankylosaur, originally thought to have been approximately 25 ft long but nowadays downsized to around 10-13 ft. Its remains had been exposed after an explosion had demolished a quarry face not far from where Mantell's Iguanodon remains had been obtained. Both of these latter forms are ornithischian or bird-hipped dinosaurs, and both were named by Mantell.

 

Professor Sir Richard Owen (public domain)

When ideas were being sought for subjects to be represented in the new Crystal Palace Park, the suggestion of constructing life-sized representations of extinct animals was put forward, although there is still some controversy as to its originator. However, Queen Victoria's enterprising consort Prince Albert (already responsible for the Great Exhibition itself), Britain's foremost zoologist and palaeontologist of the day, Prof. Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892), and the Crystal Palace's designer, Sir Joseph Paxton, were all probably involved. Once this notion had been formally accepted, in September 1852, Hawkins was duly commissioned by the Crystal Palace Company to construct these statues, using concrete, brick, lead, and steel.

Initially, the plan was to concentrate upon prehistoric mammals, with thoughts of reconstructing mastodonts, mammoths, and other furry wonders from the distant past. But once Hawkins had read some of Owen's publications, it wasn't long before the prospect of also reconstructing dinosaurs reared its reptilian head. At that time, only the above-named trio of dinosaurs had been formally recognized, so Hawkins decided to recreate all three of them with life-sized sculptures to show what they may have looked like in life. Moreover, as his work progressed, the scheme was expanded still further to include reconstructions of quite a number of other archaic beasts too.

 

'The 'Crystal Palace' from The Great Exhibition', an engraving by George Baxter, after 1854 (Wellcome Images-Wikipedia – CC BY4.0 licence)

Indeed, by the end of the project, no fewer than 33 statues representing 20 different animal species had been produced (together with some reconstructions of fossil plants too, such as cycads), yielding a major attraction dubbed Dinosaur Court (aka Dinosaur Park), which encompassed three specially-created islands within a large artificial lake, situated near the southern end of Crystal Palace Park itself. Although the idea was to focus upon such creatures that had once existed in Britain, some non-native examples were also represented, Hawkins having utilised fossil remains from Holland when reconstructing the mosasaur, for instance, from South Africa for Dicynodon, and from South America for Megatherium.

This unique project was nearing completion by the end of 1853, so to mark with suitable panache its impending official opening, a lavish banquet given by Hawkins was held on 31 December, New Year's Eve, of that same year, at which 21 notable dignitaries invited by him attended, including Owen and world-renowned bird painter John Gould. And the setting for this celebration? None other than inside Hawkins's colossal hollow mould for the construction of his standing Iguanodon statue! Never before, and probably never again, would such an event take place quite literally inside the bowels of a Mesozoic mega-beast!

 

Banquet inside the mould of Hawkins's Crystal Palace Iguanodon statue, New Year's Eve 1853 (public domain)

Just over 5 months later, on 10 June 1854, Crystal Palace Park was formally opened by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Furthermore, no fewer than 40,000 visitors were in attendance, anxious to see what the media were enthusiastically referring to as an incredible assemblage of antediluvian monsters, i.e. labeling them as giant creatures that were believed by Creationists and other religious figures from that time to have existed on Earth during its earliest age before being wiped out by the Great Flood.

Although initially proving very popular, the Crystal Palace Park's Dinosaur Court eventually fell out of favour, especially once continuing palaeontological discoveries revealed that most of its reconstructions were actually very inaccurate. Neglected, especially after the Crystal Palace's destruction by fire in 1936, the statues eventually became partially hidden amid an overgrowth of undergrowth, and suffered considerably from damage caused not only by external, environmental influences but also by vandalism. Happily, following a first major restoration project in 1952, the historical significance of Hawkins's creations as a pioneering palaeontological venture was belatedly recognized, and in 1973 they were officially classed as National Heritage Grade II Listed Monuments, upgraded to Grade I in 2007. Meanwhile, an extensive second restoration project had taken place in 2002, recreating their dignified former appearance, making many repairs to their crumbling forms, and overseen by the London Borough of Bromley, the landowner of Crystal Palace Park.

 

Indigo Iguanodons in 1995, before the 2002 restoration, showing their previous countershaded paint scheme with white undersides (public domain)

Intriguingly, I'd long heard rumours that during the 1970s and possibly beyond, some of these statues were painted in bright garish colours. Only recently, however, have I uncovered some notable details concerning this hitherto scarcely-documented chapter in their long-running saga.

For example: during their 'painted period', the standing Iguanodon statue was initially rendered a deep olive green with contrasting white underparts and golden jaw edges, but by the late 1970s both Iguanodon statues were dark indigo blue dorsally, pure white ventrally (although their throat region began as a flushed pink shade, subsequently fading to white). They still sported this colour scheme during the 1990s (as confirmed by some early 1990s videos and mid-1990s photos of them), whereas in still later photos they are a pale mint green. In addition, Mandy Holloway, Curator of Fossil Reptiles, Amphibians, and Birds at London's Natural History Museum at that time, has shown me a photograph snapped by her of the left-hand side of the Megalosaurus (nowadays uniformly grey all over) that reveals the presence of a thick red horizontal stripe running along its lower flank, and striations of the same shade upon its limbs.

 

Crystal Palace's Iguanodons when mint-green in colour (© CGPGrey/Wikipedia – CC BY 2.0 licence)

Moreover, the charity organization Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs (FOCPD – click here to access their fascinating and very worthy website) kindly alerted me to a music video from 1977 currently accessible online (click here to view it) that features the late singer Lena Zavaroni boating past these dinosaur statues while singing the song 'I Had A Brontosaurus', in which the Megalosaurus is almost entirely bright red. I'd initially assumed that this vivid colouration was simply a special-effect created for the video, but Mandy confirmed that it was genuine – the Megalosaurus having been painted red on the instructions of the now long-defunct Greater London Council (GLC), which was also responsible for painting the other statues in Dinosaur Court that were brightly coloured during that period. Apparently, the reason for doing so was to make the statues appealing to young visitors, as a children's zoo had also been set up there, on Tertiary Island.

Correspondent Sam Crehan has shown me a full-colour photo of the Megalosaurus statue during its red phase that appears in the little children's book I-Spy Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals, and which reveals that its underparts (not very visible in the Lena Zavaroni music video) were white. (I suspect that the statue's red colour in the video, so bright that it virtually glows, has been enhanced, to make it more visible against its dark, shadowy background.)

 

From I-Spy Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals as scanned by Sam Crehan, a full-colour photo of the Megalosaurus statue during its red phase (© Faber & Faber/I-Spy Ltd/Michelin – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

In January 2021, Crystal Palace Dinosaurs devotee Anthony Hawkins posted on FOCPD's Facebook page a photo of the Megalosaurus when red with white underparts that dated from December 1980. And a similar photo from 1979 was an entry in the 2016 Arles Festival of Photography, Rencontre d'Arles, a premier event for photographic art.

Finally, Canadian cryptozoological friend Sebastian Wang has drawn my attention to the official website of Palaeoplushies, a manufacturer of plush toys, which includes in its list of products not one but two versions of the Crystal Palace Megalosaurus – identical in shape and size, but very different in colour. For whereas one is grey, the other is red. In its official description of these two Megalosaurus versions, Palaeoplushies refers to the grey one as ""Classic Grey" – The current weathered grey concrete look", and to the red one as ""70s red" – The look this statue had during the 70s" (click here to view and/or purchase these Megalosaurus plushies on the Palaeoplushies website). In short, Megalosaurus really was red in colour during the 1970s and at least as recently as the early 1980s too. This in turn means that Mandy's photo of it sporting just a horizontal red flank stripe and some red leg markings was snapped at a time when most of its red paint had been removed or painted over, or had simply faded away (red and yellow pigments are very prone to fading when exposed to sunlight).

 

My resin model of the Crystal Palace Megalosaurus statue – my model's original golden-scaled form (top) and digitally recoloured to show what the statue would have looked like during its red-painted period (bottom) (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Dinosaur Court's prehistoric creatures were originally located upon, and also within the waters surrounding, three artificial islands (named Tertiary, Secondary, and Primary), and most of these statues are still there today. The general public can walk around the islands (but not as yet directly upon them, except during special annual Open Days) via a railed public footpath on the Court's mainland portion, which affords excellent views of all of the statues. The islands are arranged in geological order, with their respective creatures dating from the Cenozoic Era back as far as the Permian Period of the late Palaeozoic Era. However, the Mesozoic Era is the Court's principal focus, because that is when most of the archaic beasts represented here existed, during the Age of Reptiles, as this era is commonly termed.

After arriving inside Crystal Palace Park's Dinosaur Court, if we begin our journey through geological time with the most recent creatures represented here, as I did, the first of Hawkins's statues encountered are four different mammals from the Cenozoic Era. These were formerly present on Tertiary Island, but except for the ground sloth they have now been relocated on the nearby mainland.

 

Anoplotherium herd in Crystal Palace Park's Dinosaur Court (© Simon/Wikipedia – CC BY 2.0 licence)

One of these mammals is Anoplotherium, represented by a small herd of three statues when I visited and photographed them in 2010 (yet some sources claim that only two exist). It was a primitive artiodactyl ungulate (even-toed hoofed mammal) from the late Eocene and early Oligocene Epochs (c.37-33 million years ago).

Anoplotherium is nowadays thought to be related to camels and llamas, and which Hawkins did provide with a camel-like head and neck. Its fossil remains have been found widely across Europe, including Hampshire and the Isle of Wight in the UK.

 

Anoplotherium herd seen from the opposite side, Crystal Palace (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Also represented here is Palaeotherium, another primitive hoofed mammal, in existence at much the same time as Anoplotherium and whose remains have again been found in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Unlike Anoplotherium, however, Palaeotherium was a perissodactyl (odd-toed) ungulate. Originally there were three statues of it, but the largest one mysteriously vanished sometime after the late 1950s and has never been seen again.

Hawkins followed the opinion of eminent French zoologist Baron Georges Cuvier concerning the likely appearance of Palaeotherium in life, reconstructing it to resemble those modern-day perissodactyls the tapirs. Today, conversely, palaeontologists generally depict it as a perissodactylian parallel to the artiodactylian giraffe's shorter-necked forest relative, the okapi.

 

One of Hawkins's Crystal Palace Palaeotherium statues (© Dr Karl Shuker)

My favourite Hawkins mammals are his very imposing giant deer or Irish elks Megaloceros giganteus, consisting of two antlered adult stags standing regally and an antler-lacking adult doe reposing with her fawn close by. Even today, these statues still correspond well with palaeontological thoughts regarding their likely appearance. This is because Hawkins based them upon living modern-day deer.

In addition, for his stag statues' antlers he utilized actual complete fossils of the famously magnificent antlers borne by this species' stags, but in subsequent years these real fossil antlers were replaced by replicas. Their remains have been found not only in Ireland but also on the Eurasian mainland, including as far east as Siberian Russia. Some have been dated to as recently as the early Holocene, 8000 years ago.

 

Giant deer aka Irish elks Megaloceros giganteus at Crystal Palace Park (© Neil Cummings/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 2.0 licence)

Finally, a suitably huge Pliocene/Pleistocene Megatherium or giant ground sloth from Argentina squats upright on its haunches, grasping a tall tree. However, it sports a short trunk-like proboscis that is no longer thought to have been a valid feature of this creature.

Over the course of many years following the sloth's installation at Dinosaur Court in 1854, the girth of the tree that it is grasping grew so wide that it broke the sloth's left forearm, which needed to be restored. And at the time of my visit in 2010, its right paw was missing.

 

Front and side views of the Megatherium statue in 2010, clearly revealing that its right front paw was missing at that time (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Also worth noting is that at one stage during its long and distinguished existence, this very spectacular statue shared its location with the afore-mentioned children's zoo. That must surely be the only example of such a zoo to contain a giant ground sloth in its midst!

Moreover, although this Crystal Palace example is the first Megatherium statue to have been attempted by Hawkins, in subsequent years its gigantic species would again be an inspiration to him when designing a second major exhibit, as will be revealed later here.

 

19^th-Century engraving of the Crystal Palace Megatherium, depicting it when its right front paw was still intact (public domain)

Memorable though these bygone mammals are, it will come as no surprise to learn, however, that the most popular portion of Dinosaur Court is the next island to which the mainland public footpath now leads, Secondary Island. For this contains Hawkins's most famous creations – his Mesozoic dinosaurs and pterosaurs.  Moreover, on its shore and also in the adjacent waters of Dinosaur Court's lake are Mesozoic plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, sea crocodilians, and a mosasaur.

So that is where our virtual tour of Crystal Palace's Lost World will be taking us tomorrow, in Part 2 of this ShukerNature blog article (click here to access it) – back in time to the astonishing Age of Reptiles. And after that comes Part 3 (click here to access it), where I reveal the tragic tale of Hawkins's ill-fated Palaeozoic Museum, planned to be a major attraction in New York City. Don't miss them!

 

My mother Mary Shuker and the Megatherium statue at Crystal Palace Park on 22 April 2010 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

 

DREAMCHILD AND VAMPIRES AND HOBBITS, OH MY! [an Eclectarium of Doctor Shuker crosspost]

'Kong: Skull Island' publicity poster and film still (© Jordan Vogt-Roberts/Legendary Pictures/Tencent Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures)

I've viewed quite a number of fantasy-themed movies lately, some new, some vintage, some exceedingly obscure, but most of them offering various degrees of cryptozoological/zoomythological content and relevance. So be sure to click the link below to read my mini-reviews of these films, first published on my Facebook wall but now preserved together in my Eclectarium:

The Eclectarium of Doctor Shuker: DREAMCHILD AND VAMPIRES AND HOBBITS, OH MY!

An adult female graphorn with her calf - from 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' (© David Yates/Heyday Films/Warner Bros. Pictures)

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)