Irish Elk Research Paper

Introduction While we awake in the morning and are on our way to work or may it be late at night while we are driving we have always seen these animals around us. We also have even fallen victim to hitting them with our cars. These animals are Deer, what if I was to tell you that they had a common ancestor called the Irish elk? The Irish elk was known for its monstrous size, it has also been known to be the largest deer that has ever been documented to live in the prehistoric era. The Irish elk has been carbon dated to have lived about 7,700 years ago, it’s remains have been found in China, Siberia, Ireland, and Africa ("Irish elk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia," n.d.) . There is much speculation on who these animals were and why they were so huge in size. The topic that has the most mystery is that of why they went extinct and ultimately what caused their demise as a whole. It is crazy to be able to go back to the fossil findings of the Irish elk to see what they looked like, they peculiar looking antlers which leads to speculation on what the evolutionary need was for them.

The anatomy The Irish elk stood at about 6.9 feet tall at the shoulders, they are known to have carried the largest antlers of any known deer ("Irish elk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,"

Their last habitat known has been speculated to be in Western and Northern Europe ("Extinct Giant Deer Survived Ice Age, Study Says," n.d.). Irish elk were segregated to these type of climates due to how they would like to eat plants, bark, nuts, herbs and they offered them wooded areas also known as woodlands to be able to live comfortably due to how they were more so known as living warmer climates. ("Megaloceros," n.d.) Wooded areas are also better place for these animals to be able to hide as you see this today with deer today; they needed to hide against humans because they were also hunted as