Giant deer antlers thousands of years old put on display at Waterford museum

Giant deer antlers from eleven thousand years ago have been put on display at the Waterford Treasures Medieval Museum. 

Waterford Treasures Museum Collection has unveiled a set of antlers of the giant deer (Megaloceros Giganteus), c.9700BC, on loan from the Royal Dublin Society and on display at the Waterford Treasures Medieval Museum. 

Director of Waterford Treasures Museum Collection, Eamonn McEneaney was delighted to welcome the President of the RDS, Professor Owen Lewis along with members of the society to Waterford and said, "We are delighted to foster a new relationship with one of Ireland’s most distinguished societies and hope this leads to many more collaborations in the future." 

The Megaloceros Giganteus flourished on the lime-rich grasslands and shrub cover of the limestone bedrock of Ireland long before the first humans arrived on Irish shores. Large male giant deer were as big as horses, had small footprints, large antlers weighing about 40kg and a total body weight of about 700kg.

As with modern deer, the antlers were shed and regrown each year, requiring a huge diet of nutrients. Giant deer became extinct in Ireland and western Europe because of climate change and habitat loss, but human hunting may also have been a factor.

The antlers on loan at Waterford Treasures were found in north County Wexford and presented to the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) in 1943 by Colonel Richard Percival Wemyss Quin of Borleagh House, Gorey, Co. Wexford. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries these antlers became a potent status symbol on display in manor houses across the country when the first sets were pulled from Ireland’s bogs by intrepid amateur archaeologists.