Wikipedia
Megaloceros (from Greek: μεγαλος, megalos + κερας, keras, literally "Great Horn"; see also Lister [1987]) is an extinct genus of deer whose members lived throughout Eurasia from the late Pliocene to the Late Pleistocene 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.
Most members of the genus were extremely large animals that favoured meadows or open woodlands, with most species averaging slightly below 2 metres at the withers. The various species of the Cretan genus Candiacervus – the smallest of which, C. rhopalophorus was just 65 cm high at the shoulder – are sometimes included in Megaloceros as a subgenus. Despite its name, the Irish Elk was not related to the elk or wapiti but instead is closely related to the fallow deer genus Dama, and the genus was part of a Late Neogene Eurasian radiation of fallow deer relatives of which today only 2 taxa remain.(Lister et al. 2005, Hughes et al. 2006).
Although sometimes synonymized with Megaloceros, Praemegaceros and Megaceroides are apparently generically distinct.
Usage examples of "megaloceros".
She was smoking megaloceros meat, scavenged from a lion kill a few days earlier.
Like many giant herbivores in this paradoxically rich time, the megaloceros flourished in vast migrant crowds, wandering all across the Old World from Britain to Siberia and China.
While other species shrank to fit, the megaloceros would prove unable to give up their elaborate sexual displays.
The first great slabs of the butchered megaloceros had been hurled on to the fire.