I recently wood-crafted a replica set of “Irish Elk” antlers, complete with head, for a buyer in TN. This particular speciman had a 12′ rack. I designed it so the two antlers and head (including teeth) could be transported and assembled on site. Prices range from $4000. – $7000., depending on width. (delivery and placement may be arranged)
Please contact Bob McGavock at Horsin’ Around Carousel Carving School ,(423) 332-1111 or cell (423) 667-2960 in Chattanooga,Tn.

I found your blog through the latest edition of the Boneyard blog carnival. Keep up the great work!

1) IF they shrink/grow on a single individual over the course of a season, is that not a reflection of health and not a genetic trait that could be beneficial? Like my bones getting stronger and weaker base don my general health?

2) If the generational diferences are what is meant, that makes sense.

3) A stag with good food resources will grow larger antlers than one with poor resources. Is this what you meant?

Sorry, simple issue her about simple biology but one that has my mind in a knot while trying to digest this. The rest made perfect sense, its just that little itty bit.

Good stuff, though. I found your site a few weeks back via the mighty world of links, and havent left yet. Stuff like this makes my brain happy!

Exactly.

For females assessing the desirability of a mate, the size of the antlers is an ideal measure of the male because growing antlers is a direct proxy for growing a fetus.

Antlers grow from nothing to an enormous size in a short interval during the breeding season, just as the fetus does, and they are made of the same materials as the bones of the fetus. A male with enormous antlers is therefore more likely to be able to sire cows which can gestate big calves with big strong bones than a lesser-antlered male.

If it’s true that Irish elk had to be long-legged and fast to outrun predators, then their most vulnerable stage of life, as calves, must have had to have had really spectacularly long and strong legs. That in turn means that during the limited time in the period of gestation when the legs are growing, there must have been tremendous demands on the mother to be able to produce the minerals and other nutrients the calf needed for those exceptional legs, and the female calves sired by males with the biggest antlers could be expected to have the greatest success meeting such demands when their own time came.

I sometimes think evolutionary biologists do not spend enough time looking for specific adaptive functions for the exaggerated male phenotypes produced by sexual selection by imagining what the characteristic selected for (huge antlers in this case) would mean when translated– mutatis mutandis– into the characteristics of his female offspring (ability to gestate big fast calves, in this case).

From this point of view however, I am forced to disagree that “their disappearance had little to do with their antlers.” I would say that the enormity of the antlers is a signal to us, just as it was to the female elk, of runaway selection pressure that the Irish elk could finally not keep up with.