“A double-whammy of intense cold spells around 20,000 and 10,500 years ago had already taken their toll on these striking beasts. The last of the giant deer, squeezed out of Europe , seem to have taken refuge in the southern Ural mountains near the Black Sea . The next question we need to address is what finally killed them off, whether it was hunting, agricultural clearing of land or changes in climate or vegetation.”

Up until 20,000 years ago the giant deer, Megaloceros giganteus Blumenbach, was found across the middle latitudes of Eurasia , from Ireland to east of Lake Baikal . The males would have had to feed extensively to sustain the annual growth of their huge antlers. Indeed, it is thought that the antlers would have prevented males from entering even moderately dense woods, at least for part of the year, and one former theory for their extinction was that the seasonal nutrient requirements for the antlers alone might have killed off the species.

Traditionally, woolly mammoths were believed to have gone extinct around the same time as the giant deer, together with all the other extinct `Ice Age’ beasts such as the woolly rhino and saber-toothed cat, between about 12,000 and 10,000 years ago. However, a recent discovery found that the mammoth survived on Wrangel, a remote arctic island, until 3,600 years ago. The latest discovery shows that the giant deer also broke through this 10,000 year barrier to enter the modern era.