Another dip into my shoe box of curiosities.

Two more fossils, a tooth and a toenail, one not very old and the other very old indeed.


The molar tooth on the left may well be over 20,000 years old and is from the so called Giant Irish Elk, Megaloceros giganteus, which is now extinct. The name of the animal is completely misleading, apart from the giganteus bit which correctly indicates that this was a giant of an animal, probably the largest deer that has ever lived. However, Megaloceros from the Greek: megalos + keras, means "Great Horn" and of course deer don't have horns, they have antlers! Furthermore the Irish Elk wasn't an elk at all but most closely related to the modern Fallow deer. Finally, although remains have been found in Irish bogs, the species lived right across Eurasia, from Ireland to east of Lake Baikal. The species flourished during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene and the latest known remains have been carbon dated to about 7,700 years ago.


On the right is one of Old Nick's toenails. Devil's toenails are the fossilised remains of Gryphaea arcuata an ancient and extinct type of oyster that flourished in our seas some 200 million years ago. The thick, curved shells are reminiscent of a badly manicured "Devil's toenail", hence their common name.