The Great Irish Elk, or deer, is now extinct, though it is supposed by some to have lingered until historic times. Its remains are found widely distributed over middle Europe in deposits of palæolithic age.
Fig. 91.—Skeleton of the Irish elk (Cervus megaceros).
The Horse was also, as we have seen, a very constant associate of man in middle Europe during the Palæolithic age, but probably not as a domesticated animal. The evidence is pretty conclusive that he was prized chiefly for food. About some of the caves in France such immense quantities of their bones are found that they can be accounted for best as refuse-heaps into which the useless bones had been thrown after their feasts, after the manner of the disposal of shells of shell-fish. In America the horses associated with man were probably of a species now extinct. The skull of one (Equus excelsus) recently found in Texas, in Pleistocene deposits, associated with human implements, is, according to Cope, intermediate in character between the horse and quagga.[DM] The frontal bone was crushed in in a manner to suggest that it had been knocked in the head with a stone hammer, such as was found in the same bed. Possibly, therefore, man’s love of horse-flesh may have been an important element in securing the extinction of the species in America.
[DM] American Naturalist, vol. xxv (October, 1891), p. 912.
Besides these animals there were associated with man at this time the Musk Sheep and the Reindeer, both now confined to the regions of the far north, but during the Glacial period ranging into southern France, and mingling their bones with those both of man and of the southern species already enumerated.
Fig. 92.—Musk-sheep (Ovibos moschatius).