There’s something about the idea of a giant deer that really sparks the imagination. Megaloceros is biologically fascinating, but mythically intriguing too.
@Chase Venus very interesting input, but I just wanted to point out that no, memories are not coded into your genes to be passed on. Human intelligence is passed on through word of mouth or writing only.
@@oddydraws4807 True, it's still a bit disturbing to think of. I mean such an amazing creature bellowing in agony and fear as it goes down unable to lift itself under its own weight.
@@jadedmist Yea, I mean I guess you could experience it if you didn't know how to swim and fell in the deep end of a pool, or another large body of water and couldn't swim.
Finding them in a lake really doesn't mean anything and I guarantee you they could swim. As big as their antlers were their neck muscles and their bodies were way bigger than average deer so they were more buoyant.a human could have put it in the lake after they killed it to keep it fresh that was a common practice 10,000 years ago from what paleontologists have found. We found mammoth tests and skulls in the ocean It doesn't mean they died in the ocean though.They found a bunch of them where the Niagara River comes out now because it knocked out a mountain at the end of the last ice age when the Niagara River changed its course. There were a lot of mammoth tusks and deer bones on that mountain. But honestly you never know maybe it did drown. Not all humans can swim either lol. I still love to see one.
GirtheAlienGoldfish I was amazed the first time I went to a museum as a child and saw how huge moose are and these deers were even bigger, so know I would be.. Wow!
Im glad theyre gone. Humans would just make them go extinct again. In many ways, i wish we still had most of the creatures that used to roam the earth but i also know humans will most likely kill them off (surprise, surprise!)
I love Irish Elk, they just look absurdly majestic. Antlers themselves have always been weird to me. I'm going to spend half the year growing these things, use them for like three months, then have them fall off and start the process all over again.
they also find mammoth tusks and bones in the ground of the north sea, since the water levels were much lower back then and today's north sea was grassland
And I'm sure that even back then when our ancestors hunted to survive, there must have been a bit of a trophy hunter mentality for those who hunted those giant deer. Those antlers were probably displayed for a few days before they were transformed into useful tools.
@Gi Gi but the antlers didn't cause them to die just becaude we hunt them for them, even because as the video said we used mostly shed antlers taken from foraging and not hunting. They were just too cumbersome and when forests started growing, they were unable to move between trees and couldn't run from any kind of predator. This one is not really on us.
It's not poetic to me, it's the laziest approach to the unknown. Deer had big antlers, deer is now extinct, therefore deer must be extinct now because of its big antlers. Lets just ignore the thousands of other megafauna that went extinct around the same time period who did not suffer from impressive huge antlers.
episode request: Doggerland! an important hunting location for the people of stone age europe, site of a massive lake and huge rivers, and now entirely under the north sea. i'd love to know more about this mysterious place and its impact on human life!
The extraordinary growth rate that produced those massive antlers, year after year, is truly fascinating to me. We're talking about nearly *Wolverine* levels of regeneration - *40 kg* (equivalent to the _entire skeleton_ of an adult human male) of densely structured bone (strong enough for male vs male jousting during the male rut breeding period), grown rapidly over several short *months* , and incrementally increasing in size & structure (larger palmate surfaces, longer prongs, etc,) over the lifetime of the animal. Not to mention the remarkable vascularisation of the velvet covering during the majority of the growth phase. The sheer volume of blood flowing through the largest antlers would have required an enormously big & powerful heart (moving blood at an intense pressure) to supply the oxygen & nutrients to the osteoblasts. Did they have some form of valves within the arteries to compensate for gravity? Was there an independent supply system bypassing the brain, or did they risk having strokes/aneurisms growing such massive structures? Incidentally, the heat loss (from blood flow through the vascularised velvet) would have been significant in the icy cold environment of the European Pleistocene, meaning that they would need to minimise the growth phase as much as possible (once matured, the velvet was shed/scraped off by the animal - in a bloody mess - exposing the solid, dead bone within). Another interesting fact about antlers is the part they play in supplying nutrients to other parts of the ecosystem - with everything from squirrels to the deer themselves consuming shed antlers for the calcium & other minerals.
As truly fascinating as that is, when you lay it out like that, it's sadly no wonder that they went extinct. That kind of insanely rigorous biological activity just wouldn't be sustainable if conditions took a turn for the negative.
Thank you so much for the clear English captions (not auto generated)! They help me soooo much. I am not hearing impaired, but the way my brain works, my mind drifts off in a million different directions when someone is speaking to me. I've never been able to learn unless I was reading the text and hearing it, simultaneously. So again, thank you. You made my favorite RUclips channel of all time EVEN BETTER!
Not to mention predators became faster, slimmer, greater in numbers. No telling what the reproductive rate was for mega fauna. So that could be a factor.
This is absolute horseshit. Predator numbers actually DECREASED at the Pleistocene / Holocene transition. Irish elk however did survive well into the Holocene in the southern Ural
The Irish elk skeleton in Dublin is probably the best thing in that museum (especially since the top 2 floors have been closed to the public for years), it's really great to see.
@International Harvester the closed ones are more like metal platforms going around the wall. There was a fire years back and for some reason they never re-opened those floors
One of its many stomachs serves as a fermentation chamber for the plant matter it consumes. Hence, the animal would have been in a constant state of inebriation... hence, it's Irish. See also, cadology
Saw the head and antlers of one on the wall at Chillingham castle, couldn't actually believe it was real, had to google it to make sure I wasn't being bamboozled.
I love this channel so much and it was so great to see you do the Irish elk! Some of the best childhood memories I have is going to the natural history museum in Dublin and seeing the two huge female and males elks at the entrance. They're jet black and look so polished from the bogs. I'd really enjoy more videos on ancient plants or molecular clock things
Right? They're recent enough that we might be able to get usable DNA from them, and a moose might be large enough to carry a calf to term. And the Canadian prairies are certainly large-enough treeless grasslands to be able to support a herd, assuming the grasses are the right type. But I mean, we can always supplement their diet if need be. GoFundMe, guys? :D
It isn't as easy as you think. Just throwing in a whole new species to the biosphere may cause a lot of change in the ecosystem. For instance, all the animals in northern Eurasia are surviving without these deers, adding these deers would mean that the local food chain will get effected. The deers will also eat the food being eaten by other organism that may cause a bad change in the health of other organisms. Another major factor to consider is how the environment has changed since their extinction, it has been 7000+ years since they've been extinct. The environment has changed a lot, there are a lot of forests in northern Eurasia than there used to be, it would effect the health of the megaloceros too. There are numerous factors to consider before adding a whole new specie to the ecosystem.
Gi Gi, I think you missed my point. I was not suggesting cloning them for captivity; my point was that would really be the only place available for them because there's not really a 'wild' suited to them anymore.
Blake DiPastino is his name, I believe. And yes, he has a great voice and presentation style. If you've ever seen him on SciShow Quiz Show, you'll know he is sweet and funny too!
I read a study of male African elephants recently, the hunting of very large males. Elephants continue growing throughout their life, so the very largest oldest males are the backbone of the gene pool. The selection of younger, less developed bull elephants caused a higher genetic diversity, however the population suffered due to fewer traits to help survival through adolescence. Could this have been the case for the Irish elk?
3:00 Why do archaeologists always go to religion? In a museum once, my nephew (very young) pointed at a display of "religious artifacts" and said, "Toys" It got me to thinking. When you move house you divide all of your positions into two piles. Things you leave and things you take with you. I think universally, religious artifacts will be included in those things you take with you and the toys your child (or you) have outgrown will be among those things we leave behind. Archaeologists only ever find those things people left behind. Or at least almost always. The artifacts were skillfully made (quite beautiful) tiny animals and people made from dry grass. When Bryan pointed and said toys, I got this image of some guy, sitting around a fire bullshitting with his friends as he tied bundles of grass into dolls for his child. Even in the stone age, kids liked having toys.
Great point! I think these "grownups" sometimes forget that life isn't just a series of ceremonial sacrifices and self-abasing offerings to mysterious forces. They also forget that ancient people had a sense of humor. I've had a few laughs at the pompous labels some have put on old artifacts, which were clearly something else, more obvious & practical to a hunter-gatherer or bushcrafting person. Or, as you say, anyone who just has kids to entertain :)
Archaeologists are aware of the cop-out nature of saying "religion". That being said, the fact that your toddler sees toys in objects (especially in the modern culture of toys for children) is an equally spurious argument . Usually the argument comes from the argument from effort. These "toys" are often placed in burial contexts or deposited in water or bogs with other "toys" depicting useful animals, the human form, or something fantastical. It is a funny thought that you imagine the burials of apparently great people of their time where they are entombed with "toys" and no thought of any sacred or ritualistic purpose. Big megaliths carried across landscapes for hundreds of miles "just for fun" I guess. There is cave evidence of finger fluting that may have been for fun but the relationship of group activity and ritual is fluid. Art, ritual, magic, and religion can't be taken apart. Most of the evidence suggests people were extremely superstitious which would probably go against the idea of a Paleolithic toy collection.
They stood about two meters in shoulder hight, so they were considerably larger than even large humans. About the hight of an Alaskan Moose, though Moose are stockier and heavier.
Another thing to look at is : Phosphorus is much more available en masse in ANNUAL plants (grasses) than in forest undedrgrowth. Forests moght not have been able to supply enough of the antler-producing nutrient. (sorry, my dad was a Botany Prof, and taught us to look at eco-things is weird ways).
A while ago I aswered a questionary by eon on the community tab asking about topics, feedback and stuff. One thing that I remember mencioning was how closed captions were helpful for me - since english is my second language and some sciency names I do not know. Since then, I don't think they up a video without CC. Thank you so much for your work, Eons team! ♥
Megaloceros is possibly my favorite Cenozoic Prehistoric Animal, they are so fascinating! I’m so happy you guys finally made a video on them! Thank you!
Moose are native to North America so it won't be on the Irish Crest. But to see their mounted skeletons side by side would be a cool museum exhibit. Or maybe a taxidermy Moose and an artist recreation of an 'Irish Elk' for comparison would be really neat!
I would really look forward to a PBS Eons video on the evolution of quills throughout mammalia. Lots of interesting content to cover there - in at least 5 different ancestral lines!
The Irish Elk should definitely be brought back. They'd survive very well today in Ireland. They were pure muscle so I'd say the antlers were grand for them to hold. And unfortunately Irelands old great oak forests are long gone as there's only 5 or 6 left do I doubt they'd get caught in trees any time soon
Megaloceros is one of my favorite extinct creatures, and my favorite of the relatively modern megafauna. They're so grand and elegant, it's no wonder they inspired awe in humans in ancient times and into today.
what an amazing experience it must have been so see this giant magical creature. there’s something mystical about this animal and that’s why it’s possibly my favorite of all the Pleistocene epoc megafauna
Hey! This was an awesome and well researched video. I was wondering if you might consider doing a similar video on the "bush antlered deer"? It was in the genus Eucladoceros. I have seen one photograph of a specimen/replica from an Italian museum. But the genus does contain at least two unique seemingly well defined species. I just want to know more and this deer is tough to research because it's not as well known as the Irish elk, despite its antlers being spectacularly strange and unlike any other antlers I've seen in any species extinct or otherwise.
I have been watching these videos for a while now so I must say, I wish PBS Eons was my school and Mr Blake was the principal. They made me fall in love with natural science all over again.
Make an episode about Mesozoic mammals as a follow up to your Permian synapsid video. Species like Castoracauda and Repanomamus prove that mammals were not just stereotypical dinosaur fodder during the Mesozoic and were already diversifying towards their modern forms even before non-avian dinosaurs went extinct.
As one of the few ancient species associated with Ireland that I can think of, I've been waiting for this video ever since the channel's beginning. I actually love the idea of giant deer. I remember walking into the museum of natural history in Dublin (tiny compared to the one in London) and seeing the behemoth that it was.
It was climate change that killed the mastodons and mammoths at the same time humans developed the hunting techniques to use them for food. Just a coincidence.
@@The_Savage_Wombat Totally a coincidence that all these large animals survived millenia of glaciation-deglaciation cycles, including the last one which was warmer than the current interglacial, only to just get sick and tired and commit sudoku just as modern humans came on the scene 🙄
Actually there were a lot of elephants that went extinct in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The problem was humans. The only place some megafauna survived was in tropical Asia and Africa, where animals may have been able to evolve adaptation strategies to humans, and where tropical diseases may have limited human populations.
Here's a pic I found of someone beside one of the skeletons in the National Museum that should give an idea of the scale; foursquare.com/v/the-national-museum-of-ireland--natural-history/4bc30e692a89ef3b2273f488?openPhotoId=5153057fe4b0919d6c4ceaf6
It's shoulder hight is about 2 meter (~6.6 feet), the human was probably around 1.75 meters (~5.75 feet) so the are about as large as Modern Alaskan Moose. You cant really compare them To Elephants but they are about as big as Alaskan Moose (they have a lot larger Antlers but considerably less body weight though).
Farmers in Ireland also pull Irish elk bones out of the bog pretty regularly when cutting turf. My grandfather found a set of antlers like those back in the sixties.
I want to see an eons about our sense of balance, how the semicircular canals developed, and how sense of balance happened to develop in animal evolution. I was inspired by the Sci Show “3 senses you didn’t know you had” I love this show! Great episode!
Dont forget that antlers shed every year. The deer drop them in late winter and regrow a pair again for the mating season in fall. So these massive deer had to regrow a 100 lb set of antlers every single year very rapidly. That's an insane drain on resources and energy.
4:45 This sort of idea is just as silly as the blood rush ideas. Sexual selection might favor something that makes an organism less "fit" for example, long tail feathers making it harder to escape predictors. A peahen might find long tail feathers super sexy, but if your tail feathers are so long you get ate before you get laid your genes will not be passed on. So this sort of thing is self limiting. No matter how sexy peahens find long tail feathers, peacock tail feathers will only get so long.
The same problems apply even for the deer that still exist. For the mule deer, the bigger the antlers that a buck has, the more likely he is to win fights and get the does -- but those antlers use up a lot of nutrients during growth. But the mule deer hasn't become extinct. Instead, local deer grow antlers that are a nice compromise between the pressures of the rut and the limits of their nutrient supply. Here in southern California, they don't get much more impressive than forkhorns. In other parts of their range, they grow huge, impressive racks that make trophy hunters drool.
They may have been a lot smaller than large Eurasian Moose of the same time (broad-fronted moose), but they were probably more elegant and had a lot larger antlers, so they probably left more of an impression.
I remember seeing a skeleton of one of these as a kid in the Irish Natural History Museum and I couldn't believe that a deer that large could have existed. It was amazing.
Megaherbivor theory implies that the landscape Development (forest/grassland-ratio) was highly impacted by the diet and abundance of giant herbivore mammals. That would atl challenge the strict antler based extinction theory imo..
Hey Eons, can you cover over the new extinct species of giant predatory parrots in new zealand called Heracles inexpectatus . I think it would make an excellent edition for your channel.
Megafauna are absolutely terrifying. Giant animals that are just larger than life, more powerful than anything that has come after them, majestic and out of reach. Terrifying and beautiful
oh thats really cool that you said that! i wouldnt have thought of that but Kalos is based on France and thats where some of the cave paintings of these guys were from! how neat, that makes me really happy
@@anotherelvis No, a video of two camps of scientists literally fighting over if spinosaurus could swim or not. Like some kind of cage match or something
There’s something about the idea of a giant deer that really sparks the imagination. Megaloceros is biologically fascinating, but mythically intriguing too.
Max C. Klein It reminds me of Thranduils Deer in the Hobbit movies
@Chase Venus That's very moving. Thank you for sharing.
Thinking of the celtic woodland spirits. I bet these very creatures set the foundation for it.
@Chase Venus very interesting input, but I just wanted to point out that no, memories are not coded into your genes to be passed on. Human intelligence is passed on through word of mouth or writing only.
I'm sure this was an Inspiration for the Great Horned God.
"The antlers would cause them to drown"
*remembers that they found the antlers in a lake*
I’ll find your antlers in a lake how about that
Well remember thousands to millions of years ago the terrain was different so were a lake is now could have been a desert
@@oddydraws4807 True, it's still a bit disturbing to think of. I mean such an amazing creature bellowing in agony and fear as it goes down unable to lift itself under its own weight.
@@jadedmist Yea, I mean I guess you could experience it if you didn't know how to swim and fell in the deep end of a pool, or another large body of water and couldn't swim.
Finding them in a lake really doesn't mean anything and I guarantee you they could swim. As big as their antlers were their neck muscles and their bodies were way bigger than average deer so they were more buoyant.a human could have put it in the lake after they killed it to keep it fresh that was a common practice 10,000 years ago from what paleontologists have found. We found mammoth tests and skulls in the ocean It doesn't mean they died in the ocean though.They found a bunch of them where the Niagara River comes out now because it knocked out a mountain at the end of the last ice age when the Niagara River changed its course. There were a lot of mammoth tusks and deer bones on that mountain. But honestly you never know maybe it did drown. Not all humans can swim either lol. I still love to see one.
There's a full skeleton of an Irish elk at the Cleveland Museum of Natural history. I was amazed at how big it was. I wish they were still around.
There's a few knocking around Dublin. Our Natural History Museum and Trinity College have some.
GirtheAlienGoldfish
I was amazed the first time I went to a museum as a child and saw how huge moose are and these deers were even bigger, so know I would be.. Wow!
Kev Anathra yeah they’re massive
Im glad theyre gone. Humans would just make them go extinct again. In many ways, i wish we still had most of the creatures that used to roam the earth but i also know humans will most likely kill them off (surprise, surprise!)
@@sarathomson2682 it was probably other predators. Human polulations were very negligible at the time
I love Irish Elk, they just look absurdly majestic. Antlers themselves have always been weird to me. I'm going to spend half the year growing these things, use them for like three months, then have them fall off and start the process all over again.
Yeah there is no Irish elk, We have deer.
Well that's kinda the point. We do the same thing, except with expensive clothes and jewelry.
At least elk use theirs to fight one another.:P
It's a bit like growing nails or hair.
@@King_Cova did you watch the video...? Irish elk is another name for Megaloceros. It wasn't an elk, it just got called that.
Well, take that to the extreme and you get to the Buddhist ceremonial making and destroying of sand mandalas. :)
Imagine, you are fishing to feed your family, and then you pull out deer bones
Family: "I knew you went hunting with your friends instead!" 😡
they also find mammoth tusks and bones in the ground of the north sea, since the water levels were much lower back then and today's north sea was grassland
Oh yeah how shocking and wild *monotone*
*OMEN*
"I was just reeling in the biggest catfish you had ever seen, when...."
The Antler Theory: the same thing that immortalized them in our minds ended up killing them in the real world. Truly poetic.
Suffering from Success
And I'm sure that even back then when our ancestors hunted to survive, there must have been a bit of a trophy hunter mentality for those who hunted those giant deer. Those antlers were probably displayed for a few days before they were transformed into useful tools.
Zavire Zawir same with rhinos today
@Gi Gi but the antlers didn't cause them to die just becaude we hunt them for them, even because as the video said we used mostly shed antlers taken from foraging and not hunting. They were just too cumbersome and when forests started growing, they were unable to move between trees and couldn't run from any kind of predator. This one is not really on us.
It's not poetic to me, it's the laziest approach to the unknown. Deer had big antlers, deer is now extinct, therefore deer must be extinct now because of its big antlers. Lets just ignore the thousands of other megafauna that went extinct around the same time period who did not suffer from impressive huge antlers.
episode request: Doggerland! an important hunting location for the people of stone age europe, site of a massive lake and huge rivers, and now entirely under the north sea. i'd love to know more about this mysterious place and its impact on human life!
doggo-lsnd
hyrax Me too. My ancestors are from there.
I second that!
Doggoland, European man's best friend.
BBC In Our Time radio program has recently done a podcast about Doggerland. I’d love to see an Eons episode about it.
The extraordinary growth rate that produced those massive antlers, year after year, is truly fascinating to me. We're talking about nearly *Wolverine* levels of regeneration - *40 kg* (equivalent to the _entire skeleton_ of an adult human male) of densely structured bone (strong enough for male vs male jousting during the male rut breeding period), grown rapidly over several short *months* , and incrementally increasing in size & structure (larger palmate surfaces, longer prongs, etc,) over the lifetime of the animal.
Not to mention the remarkable vascularisation of the velvet covering during the majority of the growth phase. The sheer volume of blood flowing through the largest antlers would have required an enormously big & powerful heart (moving blood at an intense pressure) to supply the oxygen & nutrients to the osteoblasts. Did they have some form of valves within the arteries to compensate for gravity? Was there an independent supply system bypassing the brain, or did they risk having strokes/aneurisms growing such massive structures? Incidentally, the heat loss (from blood flow through the vascularised velvet) would have been significant in the icy cold environment of the European Pleistocene, meaning that they would need to minimise the growth phase as much as possible (once matured, the velvet was shed/scraped off by the animal - in a bloody mess - exposing the solid, dead bone within).
Another interesting fact about antlers is the part they play in supplying nutrients to other parts of the ecosystem - with everything from squirrels to the deer themselves consuming shed antlers for the calcium & other minerals.
Having that much blood flow through the brain twice would be dangerous, so I imagine there was some form of bypass
As truly fascinating as that is, when you lay it out like that, it's sadly no wonder that they went extinct. That kind of insanely rigorous biological activity just wouldn't be sustainable if conditions took a turn for the negative.
An Eons video about my favorite megafauna on my birthday? Hell yeah
Happy birthday
Dracorexion Ouranos happy birthday mate!
gg XD
Happy day of birth!
Happy birthday!
They reminds me of the Spirit of the Forest from Princess Mononoke
Exactly!
Ya man
Or Thranduil's war elk in the hobbit movies
@@OtakuMomokoHime It was a megaloceros! Played by a horse named Moose!
Thank you for showcasing a creature from our small but beautiful island
Eurasia = Small island
@@sceriteri4157 oh cool, which part means small ?
@@ewwwitscosso2292did you just reply to your self
@@ewwwitscosso2292anyways imagine standing in front of that giant creature
Bat evolution video please. Thanks.
I agree I would like to know why a rodent would want to fly
@@isaiaha4647 ask the flying squirrels. Chiroptera wouldn't have too much insight into the inner workings of the rodent mind.
Yikes. Thats a tough one.
@@isaiaha4647 See the previous video about flying insects
@@isaiaha4647 A bat is not a rodent. But I'm guessing your being sarcastic
Thank you so much for the clear English captions (not auto generated)! They help me soooo much. I am not hearing impaired, but the way my brain works, my mind drifts off in a million different directions when someone is speaking to me. I've never been able to learn unless I was reading the text and hearing it, simultaneously. So again, thank you. You made my favorite RUclips channel of all time EVEN BETTER!
so cool to have NI mentioned!
Not to mention predators became faster, slimmer, greater in numbers. No telling what the reproductive rate was for mega fauna. So that could be a factor.
This is absolute horseshit. Predator numbers actually DECREASED at the Pleistocene / Holocene transition. Irish elk however did survive well into the Holocene in the southern Ural
There's a full skeleton in Dublin, the scale is crazy in person!
The Irish elk skeleton in Dublin is probably the best thing in that museum (especially since the top 2 floors have been closed to the public for years), it's really great to see.
@International Harvester the closed ones are more like metal platforms going around the wall.
There was a fire years back and for some reason they never re-opened those floors
Here in Scotland too. Everytime I see it I get shivers
I went to that museum
I think we have one here in Chicago in the Field Museum, but I don't know if it's an actual specimen that was donated to us or if it's just a replica.
When he sad despite being called irish elk, i seriously thought he is going to say; it was not related to neither irish or elk.
Samir Rustem I don’t know about you, but I have Irish Elk DNA running through my veins
One of its many stomachs serves as a fermentation chamber for the plant matter it consumes. Hence, the animal would have been in a constant state of inebriation... hence, it's Irish.
See also, cadology
Saw the head and antlers of one on the wall at Chillingham castle, couldn't actually believe it was real, had to google it to make sure I wasn't being bamboozled.
Upon researching were you Bamboozled?
@@bulletsfordinner8307 the bamboozlement subsided once I did the research, but the amazement increased
I saw one in the natural history museum of paris. "huge" doesn't even begin to describe it
Eons! Can you give us longer episodes?! Maybe a 1 hour special? We love your content and just want more!
every time i see a pbs eons notification on my screen i have a nerdgasm
Creeeeeeeepy
Who is the one guy who disliked a video about giant deer?
A modern hunter who's salty that he can't shoot one.
That person may have
giganticervidophobia. My great aunt has it , it doesn't impact her life very much.
My go-to explanation is creationists.
@@melvinshine9841 mmm... venison.
@@carissstewart3211 Lol
most fishers: yeah the strangest thing i ever caught was a boot
these guys: hold my beer
Hold my antler
Yeah, the antlers get bigger with every telling.
Is there an official record for the largest antler ever caught on rod and reel.?
YOU REALLY MISSED THE CHANCE TO SAY HOLD MY DEER
Hold my deer!!!
I love this channel so much and it was so great to see you do the Irish elk! Some of the best childhood memories I have is going to the natural history museum in Dublin and seeing the two huge female and males elks at the entrance. They're jet black and look so polished from the bogs. I'd really enjoy more videos on ancient plants or molecular clock things
Request: how this fish eater changed the world (baryonyx)
no pokemon allowed
What Pokémon
@@gabesusman4592 it isn't a pokemon sorry it's a dinosaur
Denosur TM sorry can you think of a new name or animal
or, on a less happy note, why all the spinosaurs disappeared after 90 million years ago (along with many other cretaceous animals)
My first thought: let's clone them.
Right? They're recent enough that we might be able to get usable DNA from them, and a moose might be large enough to carry a calf to term. And the Canadian prairies are certainly large-enough treeless grasslands to be able to support a herd, assuming the grasses are the right type. But I mean, we can always supplement their diet if need be.
GoFundMe, guys? :D
Murphey Law Ikr. There could be enough DNA remains on their skeletons to grow new ones.
It isn't as easy as you think. Just throwing in a whole new species to the biosphere may cause a lot of change in the ecosystem. For instance, all the animals in northern Eurasia are surviving without these deers, adding these deers would mean that the local food chain will get effected. The deers will also eat the food being eaten by other organism that may cause a bad change in the health of other organisms. Another major factor to consider is how the environment has changed since their extinction, it has been 7000+ years since they've been extinct. The environment has changed a lot, there are a lot of forests in northern Eurasia than there used to be, it would effect the health of the megaloceros too. There are numerous factors to consider before adding a whole new specie to the ecosystem.
Would be an popular zoo exhibit, that's for sure. Not sure if there's a 'wild' for them anymore, though.
Gi Gi, I think you missed my point. I was not suggesting cloning them for captivity; my point was that would really be the only place available for them because there's not really a 'wild' suited to them anymore.
I have not wanted science to bring back an animal more than this simply beautiful
i dont know who this dude is but i like him! his voice is nice and he has great intonation!
Blake DiPastino is his name, I believe. And yes, he has a great voice and presentation style. If you've ever seen him on SciShow Quiz Show, you'll know he is sweet and funny too!
It's written in the end credit
Blake De Pastino : host
@@PainterVierax thank you!
Yes, I'm Blake, hello hi! (BdeP)
I read a study of male African elephants recently, the hunting of very large males. Elephants continue growing throughout their life, so the very largest oldest males are the backbone of the gene pool.
The selection of younger, less developed bull elephants caused a higher genetic diversity, however the population suffered due to fewer traits to help survival through adolescence.
Could this have been the case for the Irish elk?
This channel is literally the best thing on youtube
3:00 Why do archaeologists always go to religion? In a museum once, my nephew (very young) pointed at a display of "religious artifacts" and said, "Toys"
It got me to thinking. When you move house you divide all of your positions into two piles. Things you leave and things you take with you. I think universally, religious artifacts will be included in those things you take with you and the toys your child (or you) have outgrown will be among those things we leave behind.
Archaeologists only ever find those things people left behind. Or at least almost always.
The artifacts were skillfully made (quite beautiful) tiny animals and people made from dry grass. When Bryan pointed and said toys, I got this image of some guy, sitting around a fire bullshitting with his friends as he tied bundles of grass into dolls for his child.
Even in the stone age, kids liked having toys.
Great point! I think these "grownups" sometimes forget that life isn't just a series of ceremonial sacrifices and self-abasing offerings to mysterious forces. They also forget that ancient people had a sense of humor. I've had a few laughs at the pompous labels some have put on old artifacts, which were clearly something else, more obvious & practical to a hunter-gatherer or bushcrafting person. Or, as you say, anyone who just has kids to entertain :)
@@animistchannel2983 I’m gonna need some examples of those labels
because religious object tend to be the best maintained
Archaeologists are aware of the cop-out nature of saying "religion". That being said, the fact that your toddler sees toys in objects (especially in the modern culture of toys for children) is an equally spurious argument . Usually the argument comes from the argument from effort. These "toys" are often placed in burial contexts or deposited in water or bogs with other "toys" depicting useful animals, the human form, or something fantastical. It is a funny thought that you imagine the burials of apparently great people of their time where they are entombed with "toys" and no thought of any sacred or ritualistic purpose. Big megaliths carried across landscapes for hundreds of miles "just for fun" I guess. There is cave evidence of finger fluting that may have been for fun but the relationship of group activity and ritual is fluid. Art, ritual, magic, and religion can't be taken apart. Most of the evidence suggests people were extremely superstitious which would probably go against the idea of a Paleolithic toy collection.
"Religious artifacts = tools" too.
it surprised me how big they were! i thought they may have been just a Little bit taller than humans
They stood about two meters in shoulder hight, so they were considerably larger than even large humans. About the hight of an Alaskan Moose, though Moose are stockier and heavier.
This is one of the many species I actually want to see return
Another thing to look at is : Phosphorus is much more available en masse in ANNUAL plants (grasses) than in forest undedrgrowth.
Forests moght not have been able to supply enough of the antler-producing nutrient.
(sorry, my dad was a Botany Prof, and taught us to look at eco-things is weird ways).
A while ago I aswered a questionary by eon on the community tab asking about topics, feedback and stuff. One thing that I remember mencioning was how closed captions were helpful for me - since english is my second language and some sciency names I do not know. Since then, I don't think they up a video without CC. Thank you so much for your work, Eons team! ♥
Megaloceros is possibly my favorite Cenozoic Prehistoric Animal, they are so fascinating! I’m so happy you guys finally made a video on them! Thank you!
This channel has made me appreciate all the amazing species that have and still do roam this planet
A moose side by side would have been extra cool :)
Moose are native to North America so it won't be on the Irish Crest. But to see their mounted skeletons side by side would be a cool museum exhibit. Or maybe a taxidermy Moose and an artist recreation of an 'Irish Elk' for comparison would be really neat!
@@crazycatlady39 Moose are native to and still present in Eurasia as well and were living in Ireland during the Pleistocene.
If a deer is that big imagine how much larger the moose would be..
@@jordanboss2403 Moose ARE deer.
Moose racks are huge which would make this moderately larger rack look far less impressive.
Those dear look so majestic..........no wonder their legends captivate locals.
Imagine clearing a small berm and coming face to face with this massive beast. Terrifying and awe-inspiring at the same time
PBS EONS...love your videos. I can binge watch EONS and become so absorbed. Thank you
I would really look forward to a PBS Eons video on the evolution of quills throughout mammalia. Lots of interesting content to cover there - in at least 5 different ancestral lines!
What a coincidence! Saw an Irish Elk skeleton today in a museum
Before We Ruled the Earth Hunt or be Hunted!
The Irish Elk should definitely be brought back. They'd survive very well today in Ireland. They were pure muscle so I'd say the antlers were grand for them to hold. And unfortunately Irelands old great oak forests are long gone as there's only 5 or 6 left do I doubt they'd get caught in trees any time soon
I hear you were making a colab with TierZoo... Nice!
Which vid?
@Bacalhau da Noruega what happened in 4chan
Hook it up and pump Eons straight into my veins.
Sus
Could you imagine seeing this majestic creature in the woods. It would be absolutely mesmerizing and humbling.
requet: how antartica became uninhabitable
Yesss this would be a really good one!!
It got really cold. Wam bam thank you (its) ma'am.
There's a short period during the warm season when things actually grow there
Thank you, this was another lovely video.
Another fascinating video! Keep it up, Eons; It's always a treat to learn about the intriguing critters that predate us.
Megaloceros is one of my favorite extinct creatures, and my favorite of the relatively modern megafauna. They're so grand and elegant, it's no wonder they inspired awe in humans in ancient times and into today.
Evolutionary Deadend streets . selective pressures eventually inhibiting other things especially if the selective pressures are one sided
what an amazing experience it must have been so see this giant magical creature. there’s something mystical about this animal and that’s why it’s possibly my favorite of all the Pleistocene epoc megafauna
Hey! This was an awesome and well researched video. I was wondering if you might consider doing a similar video on the "bush antlered deer"? It was in the genus Eucladoceros. I have seen one photograph of a specimen/replica from an Italian museum. But the genus does contain at least two unique seemingly well defined species. I just want to know more and this deer is tough to research because it's not as well known as the Irish elk, despite its antlers being spectacularly strange and unlike any other antlers I've seen in any species extinct or otherwise.
I have been watching these videos for a while now so I must say, I wish PBS Eons was my school and Mr Blake was the principal. They made me fall in love with natural science all over again.
Make an episode about Mesozoic mammals as a follow up to your Permian synapsid video. Species like Castoracauda and Repanomamus prove that mammals were not just stereotypical dinosaur fodder during the Mesozoic and were already diversifying towards their modern forms even before non-avian dinosaurs went extinct.
Thanks Steve.
I'm a simple person: I see Eons, I click!💚
They finally did this so happy
The history museum in Dublin Ireland has a few skeleton models of these. Amazing animals.
As one of the few ancient species associated with Ireland that I can think of, I've been waiting for this video ever since the channel's beginning.
I actually love the idea of giant
deer. I remember walking into the museum of natural history in Dublin (tiny compared to the one in London) and seeing the behemoth that it was.
Human: *joins the game*
Any large mamal apart from elephants: bye bye!
Chinese: hold my impotence
It was climate change that killed the mastodons and mammoths at the same time humans developed the hunting techniques to use them for food. Just a coincidence.
@@The_Savage_Wombat Totally a coincidence that all these large animals survived millenia of glaciation-deglaciation cycles, including the last one which was warmer than the current interglacial, only to just get sick and tired and commit sudoku just as modern humans came on the scene 🙄
Actually there were a lot of elephants that went extinct in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The problem was humans. The only place some megafauna survived was in tropical Asia and Africa, where animals may have been able to evolve adaptation strategies to humans, and where tropical diseases may have limited human populations.
@@chir0pter Ah, sudoku, the hari-kari of megafauna!
What a majestic animal...saw them the first time in a museum, I was speechless.
Megaloceros through the Human species: "We were here!"
Humans: "We will remember!"
Humans to Megaloceros: "Thanks for the memories."
I mean we're the reason why they're not here any more...
@@chir0pter One part. The other was the loss of habitat.
How did I not know about this channel!? Fascinating!
Is the scale accurate between the megalocerus skeleton and the human? This is a deer the size of an Asian elephant..
It's! I saw it personally in the museum! Such incredible creature!
Here's a pic I found of someone beside one of the skeletons in the National Museum that should give an idea of the scale; foursquare.com/v/the-national-museum-of-ireland--natural-history/4bc30e692a89ef3b2273f488?openPhotoId=5153057fe4b0919d6c4ceaf6
It's shoulder hight is about 2 meter (~6.6 feet), the human was probably around 1.75 meters (~5.75 feet) so the are about as large as Modern Alaskan Moose. You cant really compare them To Elephants but they are about as big as Alaskan Moose (they have a lot larger Antlers but considerably less body weight though).
He's so smart, great video.
Favorite animal of all time so majestic. If I had a spirit animal it would be a Irish elk
Farmers in Ireland also pull Irish elk bones out of the bog pretty regularly when cutting turf. My grandfather found a set of antlers like those back in the sixties.
How about the lives of crabs and other crustaceans during the age of the dinosaurs?
Nothing more powerful than the Irish Elk!
Those antlers are big enough to carry a 1.78 meter tall person like me
I've seen a Megaloceros skull in person; it's spectacular. Great video as always.
Life, sex and death. My favorite metal album.
I want to see an eons about our sense of balance, how the semicircular canals developed, and how sense of balance happened to develop in animal evolution. I was inspired by the Sci Show “3 senses you didn’t know you had”
I love this show! Great episode!
I just keep thinking of them getting stuck between two trees😂
Dont forget that antlers shed every year. The deer drop them in late winter and regrow a pair again for the mating season in fall. So these massive deer had to regrow a 100 lb set of antlers every single year very rapidly. That's an insane drain on resources and energy.
4:45 This sort of idea is just as silly as the blood rush ideas.
Sexual selection might favor something that makes an organism less "fit" for example, long tail feathers making it harder to escape predictors. A peahen might find long tail feathers super sexy, but if your tail feathers are so long you get ate before you get laid your genes will not be passed on. So this sort of thing is self limiting.
No matter how sexy peahens find long tail feathers, peacock tail feathers will only get so long.
The same problems apply even for the deer that still exist. For the mule deer, the bigger the antlers that a buck has, the more likely he is to win fights and get the does -- but those antlers use up a lot of nutrients during growth. But the mule deer hasn't become extinct. Instead, local deer grow antlers that are a nice compromise between the pressures of the rut and the limits of their nutrient supply. Here in southern California, they don't get much more impressive than forkhorns. In other parts of their range, they grow huge, impressive racks that make trophy hunters drool.
@@MaureenLycaon The same problem applies to EVERY organism that shows off for sexual selection. How did you miss that point?
Such a majestic animal
Idea: Aurochs and the origin of cattle
I love these videos they make so much sense and amaze me honestly
Honestly, I'm curious if any sacred deer of later mythology also came from memories of Megaloceros.
They may have been a lot smaller than large Eurasian Moose of the same time (broad-fronted moose), but they were probably more elegant and had a lot larger antlers, so they probably left more of an impression.
I remember seeing a skeleton of one of these as a kid in the Irish Natural History Museum and I couldn't believe that a deer that large could have existed. It was amazing.
More human age megafauna!
Like the Siberian Unicorns (Elasmotherium)!
Was there ever giant hippopotamuses? That would be cool.
@@shack8110 Yes, there was: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamus_gorgops
that’s Hippopotamus gorgops: an extinct species of hippopotamus that lived in both Africa and Europe.
Megaherbivor theory implies that the landscape Development (forest/grassland-ratio) was highly impacted by the diet and abundance of giant herbivore mammals. That would atl challenge the strict antler based extinction theory imo..
Fisherman: *Finds deer bones
Hunter: *Finds nothing
Me: “So...they’re in the ocean”
Yay! A Blake video! Every time a new PBS Eons shows up, I hope it’s a Blake video. I could listen to him all day
Hey Eons, can you cover over the new extinct species of giant predatory parrots in new zealand called Heracles inexpectatus . I think it would make an excellent edition for your channel.
This series are incredible! Thank you for sharing!!
"Me wants food" - 1st Irishman
Megafauna are absolutely terrifying. Giant animals that are just larger than life, more powerful than anything that has come after them, majestic and out of reach. Terrifying and beautiful
Who’s that Pokemon?
It’s Xerneas!
oh thats really cool that you said that! i wouldnt have thought of that but Kalos is based on France and thats where some of the cave paintings of these guys were from! how neat, that makes me really happy
Im Northern Irish and this is amazing
It looks like something a elf would ride ☺️
I love this channel.
It would be nice If you included doggerland on your maps of the past
I just had a total nerdgasm. There is a set of their antlers in the local museum that has fascinated me for years.
Maybe a video on how scientists are fighting over if the spinosaurus could swim or not
I think that they already make it ruclips.net/video/STn0CxdMIKk/видео.html
@@anotherelvis No, a video of two camps of scientists literally fighting over if spinosaurus could swim or not. Like some kind of cage match or something
Imagine getting the megaloceros getting hunted to extinction
when there are only one more
What went so wrong for Megaloceros?
Well, venison is delicious.
i saw this thumb nail and screamed, these guys are my favorite !!!!!!