Elks (was Re: The absurdity, the absurdity...)

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <th81@umail.umd.edu>]

At 12:10 PM 4/7/98 -0700, Betty Cunningham wrote:

>> No, only one was sexually dimorphic.  And I never said they weren't.
>> Elk and moose, FYI, are the same animal.  One's just a European name.  I
>> never said anything that was incorrect; you said that all of these
>> animals lacked horns (or antlers, as the case may be), which is not the
>> case.
>
>I'm really tempted here to use your own methods but...
>Having encountered BOTH animals in the wild I assure you they are
>different animals.
>Moose are spatulated-antlered animals that live near ponds in the North
>feeding on pond weeds-the males have beards.  And they're MUCH bigger
>than elk.  
>Elk look like big Red deer.  We have Tule Elk closest to us here in
>California.
>
>Would you care to check your facts? ;]  
>

Oh, well...

(Current and previous students of mine can skip the below discussion: it's
just the first part of the taxonomy lecture).

I) There exists a giant cervid with a preference for marshy habitats and has
big palmate antlers which lives across northern Europe, Asia, and North America.

II) Ancient Germanic peoples called it something like "elch".

III) The Romans latinized this to "Alces"...

IV) ...which was handed down through French to English as "elk".

V)  Much later, colonists from Europe (England & France and so forth) arrive
in North America.  Some of them come across the aforementioned palmate
antlered marsh deer.  Never having seen these before, they ask the locals
for the name of the animal.  The locals call it "moose".

VI) In the meantime, other European colonists come across a different
species of big northern cervid.  They figure "Hey, these are those "elk"
things that live in Scandanavia and Russia and so forth".  (The locals
called it "wapiti", among other names).

So we have Europeans in Europe calling the big marsh deer "elk", and
European colonists in North America calling it "moose" and calling a
different animal "elk".

It is because of problems like this that Linneaus and co. proposed a
standardized system of names for the organisms of the world.

(Incidentally, the big marsh deer (elk or moose) is technically _Alces
alces_, and the North American elk (wapiti) is generally called _Cervus
canadensis_).

Now back to your regularly scheduled dinosaurs.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Vertebrate Paleontologist     Webpage: http://www.geol.umd.edu
Dept. of Geology              Email:th81@umail.umd.edu
University of Maryland        Phone:301-405-4084
College Park, MD  20742       Fax:  301-314-9661