214 AN ANCIENT HAUNT OF THE CERVUS MEGACEROS ; 
It bears a near affinity to the Irish elk ; they co-existed under similar 
circumstances, and even at times in the same localities. All three 
were contemporaneous with the Ursus speleus, the Felis spelwa, and 
other great post-pliocene carnivora ; and their remains abound in the 
ancient cavern haunts of those extinct beasts of prey. 
The cave-bear and the Irish elk appear to have been limited to a 
temperate range, and have both become extinct ; and the remains of 
the latter occur in such abundance in recent deposits that there is a 
strong temptation to assume the occurrence of some sudden change, 
climatal or otherwise, which abruptly exterminated this great fossil 
deer. The Urus and the Reindeer were both in existence in Britain 
within historic times ; whereas the evidence thus far adduced in proof 
of the co-existence there of the fossil elk with man, pertains exclu- 
sively to the paleolithic period ; and in so far as Ireland is concerned, 
where its remains occur in greatest abundance, the conviction 
is reluctantly forced on us that the great Irish deer had finally 
disappeared from its fauna before man made his appearance there. 
This, however, as will be shown, is not an opinion even now univer- 
sally accepted, either by archeologists or geologists. 
In the post-pliocene age the cave lions, bears, and hyznas, of 
Germany, France, and the British Isles, preyed on the Irish elk, 
along with the reindeer, mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, the fossil 
horse and ox ; and the bones of all of them occur among the cave 
deposits in which traces of primitive art reveal the early presence of 
man. Professor Boyd Dawkins in his record of researches in the 
Somerset caves, in 1862-3, mentions the remains of the Irish Elk as 
35 in number, where those of the Mammoth, the Reindeer and 
the Bison numbered 30 each, the Rhinoceros 233, the Horse 401, 
and the cave Hyena 467; while thirty-five implements or other 
evidences of human art suggested the contemporaneous presence of 
man. Remains of the Megaceros have in like manner been identified 
in the Devonshire Caves ; and especially in Kent’s Hole Cave in the 
same strata with flint and bone implements. Its bones are included 
among the specified contents of the famous sepulchral cave of 
Aurignac, at the northern foot of the Pyrenees; and its remains 
have been recognized in seventeen different cave deposits to the 
north of the Alps; in eleven of which there are indications of the 
presence of paleolithic man. 
