#st patrick

St Patrick, Republic of Ireland / Éire, 1940

Megaloceros for St. Patrick’s Day

There is no animal that is as emblematic of Ireland’s prehistoric past (and the country’s rich heritage as a whole) than the Irish Elk, scientifically known as Megaloceros gigas, which despite its name is actually a gigantic relative of fallow deer. M.gigas was a staple of the middle to late-Pleistocene Megafauna of Eurasia alongside beasts such as the wooly mammoth and wooly rhino, and its spectacular-looking antlers, which have a span of 3 meters, are the largest of any deer species living or extinct. The first fossils of the creature came in the form of antlers that were commonly unearthed in Ireland since ancient times, and Irish physician Thomas Molyneux made the first scientific descriptions of the Irish Elk based of a pair of antlers found in Dardistown, a hamlet near Dublin, in 1695. Numerous remains of these huge, cursorial (long-legged and adapted for running) deer have also found in Irish bogs, and have given M.gigas its vernacular or colloquial name.

Saint Patrick