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“Big Game” Extinction Caused by Late Pleistocene Climatic Change: Irish Elk (Megaloceros Giganteus) in Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Anthony D. Barnosky
Anthony D. Barnosky*
Affiliation:
Section of Vertebrate Fossils, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylania 15213 USA
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Abstract

Megaloceros giganteus, the largest Eurasian deer, inhabited Ireland from ca. 12,000 yr B.P. to the time of its extinction ca. 10,600 yr B.P. The archaeologic record documents that people arrived on the island no earlier than 9000 yr B.P., so they could not have caused the extinction in Ireland. Close stratigraphic association of the geologically youngest elk fossils with sediments indicating the onset of the Nahanagan Stadial (approximately = Younger Dryas) implicates climatic change as the exterminator. Palynologic data support the idea that extinction probably resulted when forage quantity and quality along with length of the spring green-up decreased during the Nahanagan Stadial. For M. giganteus, this meant that the energy intake required to sustain large bodies, grow enormous antlers, and build fat reserves for winter was increasingly difficult to maintain, until deaths, primarily by winterkill, outnumbered births.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , January 1986 , pp. 128 - 135
Copyright
University of Washington

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