Fishermen find skull and giant elk antlers gone 10,000 years ago

Two lucky fishermen from Northern Ireland fired huge skulls 1.8 meters long into this skull. The extraordinary specimen belonged to the great momentum, which has not been seen in Ireland for more than 10,000 years. Belfast Live reports.

Raymond McElroy and Charlie Coyle fished for pollan (a white fish from Ireland) at Lough Neagh, a freshwater lake in Northern Ireland. According to Belfast Live, they fished in an area called the thorns when they fell on the skull and the remarkable woods that were caught in their fishing net.

"He arrived in the net on the side of the boat. I thought it was a bit of black oak to start, "said McElroy Belfast Live. "I was shocked at first when I got him overboard and saw the skull and the antlers. It's pretty good. "

Yeah, good enough. I would choose a different adjective, which I will not reproduce here, but these woods are absolutely great, especially given the length of time spent at the bottom of a lake. McElroy and Coyle made the discovery on September 5th.

The remains, dredged to a depth of 6 m, belonged to an extinct species known as great moose (Megaloceros giganteus), sometimes called Irish Elk. The skull almost intact, with its still attached wood, measures 1.8 m in diameter, according to LiveScience.

The skull and antlers have not been dated, but these majestic animals – the largest deer species that has ever existed – have disappeared from Ireland 10,500 to 11,000 years ago. Great elk also existed in Eurasia, the last one disappeared from Siberia 8000 to 6000 years ago.

Four years ago, a long jaw of great momentum was extracted from Lough Neagh at about the same place, which led McElroy to think that he belonged to the same deer as this skull and these wood. The remains of these animals, most of which have been found in Ireland, are often exhumed in peat bogs and lakes.

The big moose were really impressive: they were about 2 meters high and the males had woods 3 meters wide. These woods were probably the result of sexual selection because they were not suitable for men's combat. According to the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California, these woods have probably intimidated rivals and attracted women.

Massive woods were a considerable burden for the males of the big elk; sitting on their heads, the woods weighed more than 28 to 40 kg.

Talk to Belfast LiveMike Simms, a scientist at the Ulster Museum, said that environmental changes were probably at the root of the extinction of this species. By the end of the Pleistocene, the grasslands of Ireland, on which the Great Wapiti had flourished for thousands of years, had become forests.

This shocked the big momentum, which could not adapt. A 2008 study by researchers at the University of Florida concluded that these environmental changes halved the reproductive output of elk.

The skull and the woods are currently stored in McElroy's garage until local authorities decide what to do with them. I hope that they will exhibit the specimen in a local museum.