Megaloceros
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Megaloceros
''Megaloceros'' (from Greek: + , literally "Great Horn"; see also Lister (1987)) is an extinct genus of deer whose members lived throughout Eurasia from the early Pleistocene to the beginning of the Holocene and were important herbivores during the Ice Ages. The largest species, ''Megaloceros giganteus'', vernacularly known as the "Irish elk" or "giant elk", is also the best known. Fallow deer are thought to be their closest living relatives. ''Megaloceros'' is part of the deer family which includes moose, elk, reindeer, and other cervids. Biology Most members of the genus were extremely large animals that favoured meadows or open woodlands. They are the most cursorial deer known, with most species averaging slightly below at the withers. The various species of the Cretan genus ''Candiacervus'' – the smallest of which, ''C. rhopalophorus'' was just high at the shoulder – are sometimes included in ''Megaloceros'' as a subgenus. Despite its name, the Irish elk was neith ...
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Megaloceros Giganteus
The Irish elk (''Megaloceros giganteus''), also called the giant deer or Irish deer, is an extinct species of deer in the genus '' Megaloceros'' and is one of the largest deer that ever lived. Its range extended across Eurasia during the Pleistocene, from Ireland to Lake Baikal in Siberia. The most recent remains of the species have been carbon dated to about 7,700 years ago in western Russia. /nowiki>International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature.html" ;"title="International Code of Zoological Nomenclature">/nowiki>International Code of Zoological Nomenclature">International Code of Zoological Nomenclature">/nowiki>International Code of Zoological Nomenclature/nowiki> (article 12) to validate ''Megalocerus''." The original spelling of ''Megalocerus'' was never used after its original publication.In 1844 Richard Owen named another synonym of the Irish elk, including it within the newly named subgenus ''Megaceros'', ''Cervus'' (''Megaceros'') ''hibernicus''. This has been suggested ...
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Irish Elk
The Irish elk (''Megaloceros giganteus''), also called the giant deer or Irish deer, is an extinct species of deer in the genus ''Megaloceros'' and is one of the largest deer that ever lived. Its range extended across Eurasia during the Pleistocene, from Ireland to Lake Baikal in Siberia. The most recent remains of the species have been carbon dated to about 7,700 years ago in western Russia. /nowiki>International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature.html" ;"title="International Code of Zoological Nomenclature">/nowiki>International Code of Zoological Nomenclature">International Code of Zoological Nomenclature">/nowiki>International Code of Zoological Nomenclature/nowiki> (article 12) to validate ''Megalocerus''." The original spelling of ''Megalocerus'' was never used after its original publication.In 1844 Richard Owen named another synonym of the Irish elk, including it within the newly named subgenus ''Megaceros'', ''Cervus'' (''Megaceros'') ''hibernicus''. This has been suggested ...
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Irish Elk
The Irish elk (''Megaloceros giganteus''), also called the giant deer or Irish deer, is an extinct species of deer in the genus ''Megaloceros'' and is one of the largest deer that ever lived. Its range extended across Eurasia during the Pleistocene, from Ireland to Lake Baikal in Siberia. The most recent remains of the species have been carbon dated to about 7,700 years ago in western Russia. /nowiki>International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature.html" ;"title="International Code of Zoological Nomenclature">/nowiki>International Code of Zoological Nomenclature">International Code of Zoological Nomenclature">/nowiki>International Code of Zoological Nomenclature/nowiki> (article 12) to validate ''Megalocerus''." The original spelling of ''Megalocerus'' was never used after its original publication.In 1844 Richard Owen named another synonym of the Irish elk, including it within the newly named subgenus ''Megaceros'', ''Cervus'' (''Megaceros'') ''hibernicus''. This has been suggested ...
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Megaceroides
''Megaceroides algericus'' is an extinct species of deer known from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene of North Africa. It is one of only two species of deer known to have been native to the African continent, alongside the Barbary stag, a subspecies of red deer. It is considered to be closely related to the giant deer species of Eurasia. Taxonomy The species was first described by Richard Lydekker as ''Cervus algericus'' in 1890 from a maxilla with teeth found near Hammam Maskhoutine in Algeria. The species ''Cervus pachygenys'' was erected for a pachyostotic mandible and an isolated molar found in Algeria by Auguste Pomel in 1892. Léonce Joleaud in two publications in 1914 and 1916 synonymised the two species, and suggested affinities with the giant deer of Europe, and placed it in the newly erected subgenus ''Megaceroides'' within the genus ''Megaceros'' (junior synonym of ''Megaloceros'') as the type species. Camille Arambourg in publications in 1932 and 1938 raised '' ...
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Praemegaceros
''Praemegaceros'' is an extinct genus of deer, known from the Pleistocene and Holocene of Western Eurasia. It contains the subgenera ''Praemegaceros,'' ''Orthogonoceros'' and ''Nesoleipoceros''. It has sometimes been synonymised with ''Megaloceros'' and ''Megaceroides'', however they have been found to be generically distinct. ''P. obscurus'' is the earliest known species from the Early Pleistocene of Europe, and had long, crooked antlers. ''P. verticornis'' is an Early to Mid-Pleistocene species, closely related to ''P. obscurus'', which lived throughout Southern Europe. The genus was widely distributed across Europe, West and Central Asia during the Early-Middle Pleistocene, with fossils having been discovered in France, Georgia, Germany, England, Greece, Israel, Italy, Romania, Russia Spain, Syria, and Tajikistan. The genus was extinct in mainland Europe and Asia by end of the Middle Pleistocene. An insular species, ''P. cazioti'' survived into the Late Pleistocene and Holocen ...
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Deer
Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the reindeer (caribou), white-tailed deer, the roe deer, and the moose. Male deer of all species (except the water deer), as well as female reindeer, grow and shed new antlers each year. In this they differ from permanently horned antelope, which are part of a different family (Bovidae) within the same order of even-toed ungulates (Artiodactyla). The musk deer (Moschidae) of Asia and chevrotains (Tragulidae) of tropical African and Asian forests are separate families that are also in the ruminant clade Ruminantia; they are not especially closely related to Cervidae. Deer appear in art from Paleolithic cave paintings onwards, and they have played a role in mythology, religion, and literature throughout history, as well as in heraldry, such as ...
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Sinomegaceros
''Sinomegaceros'' is an extinct genus of deer known from the Early to Late Pleistocene of Central and East Asia. It is considered to be part of the group of "giant deer" (often referred to collectively as members of the tribe Megacerini), with a probable close relationship to ''Megaloceros''. Many members of the genus are noted for their distinctive palmate antler brow tines. Taxonomy The first species of the genus ''S. ordosianus'' and ''S. pachyosteus'' were named by pioneering Chinese paleontologist C. C. Young as species of ''Cervus'' in 1932 for material from Zhoukoudian. In a review of the paper the subsequent year Dietrich created the name ''Sinomegaceros'' as a subgenus of ''Cervus'' to house the species, with ''S. pachyosteus'' as the type species. Due to the fact that the name was not published in a formal research paper, it was not widely used for several decades after publication. The species ''S. yabei'' was named in 1938. In the following decades various research ...
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Candiacervus
''Candiacervus'' is an extinct genus of deer native to Pleistocene Crete. Due to a lack of other herbivores, the genus underwent an adaptive radiation, filling niches occupied by other taxa on the mainland. Due to the small size of Crete, the genus underwent insular dwarfism, the smallest species, ''C. ropalophorus'', stood about 40 cm at the shoulders when fully grown, as can be inferred from a mounted skeleton. Some species (''C. ropalophorus'') are noted for their peculiar, spatula-shaped antlers, though other species have normal albeit miniaturized antlers. Other features are the relatively short limbs, the massivity of the bones and the simplified antler. They were traditionally considered to be related to the giant Irish elk, with some experts regarding ''Candiacervus'' as a subgenus of ''Megaloceros''. However, van der Geer (2018) finds them closer to ''Dama''. Taxonomy The Cretan deer is a typical example of taxonomical problems involving endemic insular mammals ...
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Wapiti
The elk (''Cervus canadensis''), also known as the wapiti, is one of the largest species within the deer family, Cervidae, and one of the largest terrestrial mammals in its native range of North America and Central and East Asia. The common name of "elk" is open to confusion, as "elk" is the name used in British English for the larger ''Alces alces'', with similar names used by other European languages (German ''Elch'', Swedish ''älg'', and French ''élan''). In North America, the common name for ''Alces alces'' is "moose". The name "wapiti" is sometimes used for ''Cervus canadensis'', which derives from the Shawnee and Cree word ''waapiti'', meaning 'white rump'. Elk range in forest and forest-edge habitat, feeding on grasses, plants, leaves, and bark. Male elk have large antlers which they shed each year. Males also engage in ritualized mating behaviors during the rut, including posturing, antler wrestling (sparring), and ''bugling'', a loud series of vocalizations that ...
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Moose
The moose (in North America) or elk (in Eurasia) (''Alces alces'') is a member of the New World deer subfamily and is the only species in the genus ''Alces''. It is the largest and heaviest extant species in the deer family. Most adult male moose have distinctive broad, palmate ("open-hand shaped") antlers; most other members of the deer family have antlers with a dendritic ("twig-like") configuration. Moose typically inhabit boreal forests and temperate broadleaf and mixed forests of the Northern Hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the Equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined as being in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the solar system as Earth's Nort ... in temperate to subarctic climates. Hunting and other human activities have caused a reduction in the size of the moose's range over time. It has been reintroduced to some of its former habitats. Currently, most moose occ ...
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Extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence. More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryote globally, and possibly many times more if microorganisms, like bacteria, are included. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, dodos, m ...
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Eurasia
Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago and the Russian Far East to the east. The continental landmass is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and Africa to the west, the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and by Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean to the south. The division between Europe and Asia as two continents is a historical social construct, as many of their borders are over land; thus, in some parts of the world, Eurasia is recognized as the largest of the six, five, or four continents on Earth. In geology, Eurasia is often considered as a single rigid megablock. However, the rigidity of Eurasia is debated based on paleomagnetic data. Eurasia covers around , or around 36.2% of the Earth's total land area. It is also home to the largest ...
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