Posts Tagged ‘stag-moose’

How far South did the Extinct Stag-Moose (Cervalces scotti) Range During the Late Pleistocene?

October 2, 2018

A species of extinct deer, slightly larger than a modern day moose (Alces alces), occurred south of the ice sheets during the late Pleistocene.  It is alternatively known as stag-moose or elk-moose, but its scientific name is Cervalces scotti. This giant deer had the long nose of a moose, though its antlers were more like those of an elk.  However, it shared a closer common ancestor with the former.  They inhabited wetlands surrounded by mixed forests dominated by spruce but with significant elements of pine and hardwoods.  Like modern day moose, they fed upon aquatic plants during summer and twigs during winter.  Mastodons occupied a similar habitat and fed on the same foods, so the 2 species often co-occurred together.

Evidence from the fossil record suggests stag-moose were particularly abundant in midwestern bogs left by retreating glaciers.  Stag-moose bones are quite commonly found in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and New York.  Surprisingly, they occurred even farther south with isolated fossil remains having been discovered in Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, and South Carolina.  The stag-moose remains found in Desha and Philips County, Arkansas and Rosedale, Mississippi are at 34 degrees latitude.  These consist of antler fragments and a jawbone with a tooth.  The stag-moose specimen from Charleston, South Carolina (just a tooth) occurred at 32 degrees latitude.  This is probably close to the southern limits of its former range because stag-moose remains are completely absent from sites in fossil rich Florida.

Image result for cervalces scotti

Artist’s depiction of the stag-moose.  They were huge. That is a lot of venison.

A stag-moose skeleton found in Chippewa Lake, Medina, Ohio had 1 bone that had attached sediment filled with pollen representing the type of environment it lived in.  The pollen included fir, maple, alder, aspen, birch, hickory, hackberry, hazelnut, ironwood, pine, oak, basswood, elm, spruce, cedar, ragweed, grass, and cattail.  Spruce pollen made up 60% of the total.  It seems likely the type of environment favored by the stag-moose, as far south as Charleston, South Carolina, included various compositional ratios of these species.  I hypothesize stag-moose occurred in the mid-south during cool moist interstadials rather than the coldest driest stages of Ice Ages.  Wetlands would’ve been more common during these climatic phases.  Full blown glacial maximums restricted stag-moose habitat because desert scrub and grassland habitat expanded then.

Although there is no supporting archaeological evidence, I think overhunting by humans caused the extinction of the stag-moose.  Man colonized North America when ice sheets covered most of Canada, thus restricting stag-moose to more temperate regions where humans became common enough to impact their populations.  When the glaciers began to recede, optimal stag-moose habitat increased, but humans had already decimated their populations into extinction.  Modern day moose crossed the Bering land bridge, and ecologically replaced the stag-moose and were able to survive in northern latitudes where human populations remained too scarce to overhunt them.


Mcdonald, Greg; R. Glotchober

“Partial Skeleton of an Elk-Moose, Cervalces scotti, from Chippewa Lake, Medina County Ohio”

Research Paper 2017

The Amazing Adaptable Whitetail Deer (Odocoileus virginiana)

March 5, 2013



Whitetail deer buck in its summer red coat.  This is the time 0f year pioneers collected deer hides and sold them for a dollar, hence the word “buck.”

Whitetail deer in its dull winter coat that helps it blend in a deciduous woods background.  Maybe it’s this adaptation that allowed it to survive when 3-toed horses couldn’t.

Whitetail deer thrive in fragmentary forests, explaining why they’ve been successful for so long.  Forests in southeastern North America have always been fragmentary.  Factors such as fire, windstorms, megafauna foraging, insect damage, plant diseases, and seed consumption create the patchy forest edge environments of constantly changing composition favored by whitetail deer.  The teeth of whitetail deer evolved from those of O. brachyodontus to enable them to include more grass in their diet–another advantage over Miocene browsers as the amount of grassland increased when climatic conditions changed.

Contrary to what I’ve read on some websites, during the Pleistocene, whitetail deer were just as widespread as they are today.  It is more accurate to say that in some regions they were less common than some now extinct species of megafauna.  In south Florida for example long-nosed peccaries apparently were more abundant than whitetails.  Llamas and tapirs likely competed with deer for the same resources in forested environments, while bison and horse were more successful in grasslands.  But deer were present just about everywhere, and I suspect they were the most common large mammal in the mid-south, even during most of the Pleistocene.

Modern anthropogenic land usage contributes to the fragmentary habitats whitetail deer are so well adapted to.  Men converted farmland to wooded suburbs, and abandoned farmland has become second growth forest.  Overhunting by man is the only threat to the existence of whitetail deer.  Whitetails do reproduce faster than all the extinct species of megafauna that couldn’t withstand human hunting pressure.  But in the past, intense human hunting has eradicated whitetail deer populations in many areas.  Deer were reported as scarce near large Indian settlements as early as 1704.  By the early 20th century deer were almost extinct in Georgia, but deer from the Great Lakes region were re-introduced here, and with proper management practices they remain abundant.  When I go jogging in my neighborhood I see fresh tracks daily, and I see  deer sprint in front of me about once every 6 weeks.  Some hunters complain deer are becoming less common, and they’re quick to blame coyotes.  I think the DNR needs to take a second look at the annual limit which is now up to 10.  30 years ago, the limit was just 3.  I find it ironic when hunters shoot 10 deer on their property, then wonder why they don’t see any deer the next year.  “It’s the coyotes,” they say.  Couldn’t it have something to do with the overgenerous season limits?

Whitetails are outcompeting mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) in parts of the west undergoing suburbanization.  The latter prefer unbroken wilderness rather than the fragmentary habitat favored by their close relatives.  Mule deer evolved from an isolated population of whitetail deer some time during the early Pleistocene.  Some scientists proposed that the mule deer is a recent species resulting from a hybridization of blacktail and whitetail deer, but the fossil record and genetic studies debunk this hypothesis.  There are distinct fossils of mule deer dating to the mid-Pleistocene of California.  Moreover, studies of mule deer genetics show that blacktails and mule deer are the same species, despite sporting marked differences in physical appearance.  During the Last Glacial Maximum the Cordilleran Glacier separated mule deer from West Coast blacktails for thousands of years, accounting for the different physical traits, but they are still considered the same species by most experts.

Incidentally, Bjorn Kurten mentioned Pleistocene mule deer fossils found in Arkansas.  This is about 100 miles east of the species’ current range.  Whitetails are the only deer species found throughout the south, but the fossil record shows that elk (Cervus elephus), caribou (Rangifer tarandus), and the extinct stag-moose (Cervalces scotti) ranged into the mid-south during the Pleistocene.  Elk likely inhabited grassy hilltops in the piedmont region of Georgia until about 1760.  Elk fossils have been found as far south as Charleston, South Carolina.  Caribou fossils have been recorded from north Mississippi, north Alabama, north Georgia, the continental shelf off the coast of North Carolina; New Bern, North Carolina; and Charleston, South Carolina.  Most caribou fossils found in the south date to the Last Glacial Maximum, but 1 specimen came from interglacial strata. In the primeval wilderness of the Pleistocene there were probably a considerable number of stragglers that broke from huge herds located farther to the north, and these stragglers often wandered south.  There were no manmade barriers stopping them.  Fossils of the stag-moose have been found in Charleston, South Carolina and north Mississippi.  Elk, caribou, and stag-moose never could colonize the lower south and Florida because winters were too short and mild to limit the populations of blood-sucking insects that weaken northern species of deer.

Mule deer.  During the Pleistocene they ranged as far east as Arkansas.  Unlike whitetails, they prefer unbroken wilderness.

Elk.  William Bartram found elk bones on a grassy hilltop that I believe is located in Columbia County just above Augusta.  See https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/a-serpentine-barren-in-georgia-burkes-mountain/

Woodland Caribou wandered south, especially during the Last Glacial Maximum when stragglers broke off from huge herds migrating south of the ice sheets in what is now southern Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvannia.

Replica skeleton of a stag-moose, aka elk-moose.  Neither common name is accurate.  It wasn’t closely related to either elk or moose.  I prefer calling it the giant stag deer.  It was slightly bigger than a modern day moose.

South American red brocket deer.   All South American deer likely evolved from whitetails.  There’s no convincing evidence that any South American deer species ever lived in North America, though a member of the fossil forum claims he may write a paper about material he found in Florida that can be attributed to a South American species.

I used to think an additional extinct species of deer populated the upper south–the stilt-legged deer (Sangamona fugitiva).  But scientists analyzed the remains attributed to this species and determined all the material came from whitetails or elk.  Sangamona fugitiva is no longer considered a valid species, and as I related last week, fossil remains of marsh deer in Florida are probably from an incorrectly identified whitetail.

All South American deer probably evolved from whitetail deer.  Andean mountain deer, marsh deer, brocket deer, and pudus became geographically isolated from whitetails.  The latter do range into northern South America, but environmental change throughout the Pleistocene isolated the original populations of whitetails further south in the continent, resulting in varied speciation.  Dry climatic phases isolated tropical forests, causing them to become separated by vast grasslands and wetlands, and isolated populations of whitetails evolved into different species.

What was the Deer-Hunting like in Pleistocene Georgia?

September 3, 2010

Deer-hunting season begins in Georgia this month.  The only native species of deer modern hunters can hunt in state is the white tail deer (Odocoileus virginianus) which numbers close to 1.2 million, making it the second most common large mammal in the state, behind man.  This season, hunters are allowed to take an astonishing 10 antlerless and 2 antlered deer, suggesting either a shortage of hunters or an overpopulation of deer.

The fossil record provides evidence that white tail deer were a common large mammal species during the Pleistocene too.  Their bones are found in almost all Pleistocene-dated sites in state.  They’re a species that prefers forest edge habitats, and the dynamic ecosystems of the Ice Age with fire, rapid climate fluctuations, and megafauna  destruction of trees, created extensive areas of this type of habitat.

Photos I took of white tail deer at Fripp Island, South Carolina.  The deer here are numerous and have little fear of humans.  Nevertheless, they should not be approached or fed because they are unpredictable wild animals and dangerous.  They can use their hooves to stomp people.  Deer have been known to kill dogs.

I suspect elk (Cervus canadensis) may have been the second most common kind of deer in what’s now Georgia during the Ice Age, ranging as far south as the fall line between the piedmont and the coastal plain.  Elk fossils from Kingston Saltpeter Cave in north Georgia, and near Charleston, South Carolina are the southernmost record of this species.  None have been found in Florida’s abundant fossiliferous deposits.  I think this is evidence of an abrupt difference in climate between the piedmont region of southeastern North America and the coastal plain.

Scientists don’t know much about the extinct fugitive or stilt-legged deer (Sangamona fugitiva).  It was like a white tail deer but approached an elk is size, maybe being slightly smaller.  The deer lived in east central North America from Missouri to West Virginia and a definitive record comes from Hamblen, Tennessee.  It probably occurred in northern Georgia because Dr. Clayton Ray found a tooth that may or may not have been from this species–the specimen was in too dodgy a condition to identify with certainty.

That caribou (Rangifer caribou) lived in northern parts of southeastern states during the Ice Age fascinates me.  Caribou fossils discovered in Bell Cave, Yarbrough Cave in Georgia, and near Charleston, South Carolina are evidence this species lived much further south than it did in historical times.  Were they stragglers or members of large migrating herds that regularly travelled through Georgia?  I wish I knew.

The stag-moose, or elk moose (Cervalces scotti) is kind of misnamed for it wasn’t closely related to a moose or an elk.  It was named so because it slightly surpassed a moose in size and sported antlers similar to those of the elk.  However, it was a distinct species, now extinct.  Its fossils are occasionally found in places like Ohio or New York.  One tooth of this species was discovered in Magnolia Phosphate Mine near Charleston (as I noted in a previous blog entry about the site)–evidence a small population roamed the upper south.

Pleistocene venison may have had a bitter flavor.  According to pollen records, wormwood (Artemesia) flourished more abundantly in the south than it does today.  This plant still commonly occurs in western localities, such as in Yellowstone National Park.  Reportedly, game that’s been eating wormwood acquires a bitter taste.  I can attest to the fine qualities of wild Georgia white tail deer meat–it tastes like dry beef, and I think the wild venison is better than New Zealand farm-raised animals, which though also good, tastes more like lamb.