​​A simple Irish fisherman, Raymond McElroy, has found the skull of a giant deer (otherwise known as the Irish elk)

​​A simple Irish fisherman, Raymond McElroy, has found the skull of a giant deer (otherwise known as the great-horned or Irish deer). The find landed in a fishing net in the largest lake in Great Britain, Lough Neagh (in Northern Ireland, not far from Belfast). This is the second discovery of Irish deer remains in this lake in recent years: before that, in 2014, a jawbone of the extinct animal was found, the jaw being at least 14,000 years old. Of the skull with its magnificent antlers it can be said that it is at any rate no younger than 10,000 years. That is about the time when the species vanished from the island because of the spread of forest: deer with colossal antlers could live only on predominantly open, level ground, and the advance of woodland over the plains in time drove the animals out entirely.