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Irish elk

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.03 sec.
Irish elk: see elk elk, name applied to several large members of the deer family. It most properly designates the largest member of the family, Alces alces, found in the northern regions of Eurasia and North America. In North America this animal is called moose .
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Irish elk

Any member of a genus (Megaloceros) of extinct giant deer commonly found as fossils in Pleistocene deposits (1.8 million–10,000 years ago) in Europe and Asia. About the size of a modern moose, the Irish elk had the largest antlers of any form of deer known, in some specimens about 13 ft (4 m) across. It may have survived until c. 700–500 BC.



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However, scientists subsequently compared Irish elk body features with those of many deer and suggested that a different species, the red deer, is the extinct elk's closest living kin.
Antlers sported by male Irish elk spanned up to about 3.
An ice age inhabitant of Europe and Asia, the Irish elk evolved antlers reaching 3 meters across and weighing 40 kilograms--too big for the animals' own good, according to a new analysis of antler growth.
 
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