So I just arrived back from best manning duties at my friend's wedding. I'm pleased to report that was fabulous but I thought I'd post about something rather surprising at the wedding venue. I walked through the door into the hotel reception to be met by a sight a little like this......
This isn't the exact rack I saw but the same species at the London NHM (bizarrely the hotel's appeared to be bigger and better than LNHM's!). It is obviously a deer's skull and antlers and specifically those of the Giant Deer or Irish Elk, Megaloceros giganteus. I think this picture gives some idea of the monumental scale this animal dealt in but lets have some figures to make it absolutely clear. This is an animal roughly the same size as the biggest living moose but with antlers 50% bigger again than even the biggest moose at a 12 foot plus spread along the curvature. In addition the antlers, being palmate like those of the fallow deer would look at their most massive when it was looking directly at you. This is one of the species represented in the cave paintings at Lascaux and one has to wonder what it would've been like for a primitive hunter armed with a spear to stalk a beast like this - there is really nothing comparable in the modern era in terms of maneuverability and destructive mass of weaponry.
Irish elk died out at the end of the pleistocene (like a lot of supercool stuff did) but the reasons for this are far from clear - overhunting as always remains a possibility but overspecialisation and changes in vegetation are also possibles as is a climate based issue. Its worth noting that, like all deer, these things shed those 88lb antlers every year and regrew them so the stress on big males to remain in peak condition must have been monstrous.
In other news, taking the hotel's lead, I very much want a rack of these to go over our front door......
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