Cervalces scotti, also known as stag-moose, is an extinct species of large deer that lived in North America during the Late Pleistocene epoch. It is the only known North American member of the genus Cervalces. Its closest living relative is the modern moose.
Cervalces scotti
Cervalces scotti size chart.
Big Bone Lick State Park is located at Big Bone in Boone County, Kentucky. The name of the park comes from the Pleistocene megafauna fossils found there. Mammoths are believed to have been drawn to this location by a salt lick deposited around the sulfur springs. Other animals including forms of bison, caribou, deer, elk, horse, mastodon, moose, musk ox, peccary, ground sloths, wolves, black bears, stag moose, saber-toothed cats, and possibly tapir also grazed the vegetation and salty earth around the springs that the animals relied on for their diet.
Big Bone Lick State Park
Statue of a woolly mammoth stuck in the soft earth, showing how the fossils were created.
Anatomist William Hunter suggested in 1768 that this mastodon tooth came from an extinct type of carnivorous elephant.
1807 letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Rogers Clark requesting that the bones Rogers had collected at Big Bone Lick be packed and shipped to a New Orleans collector, who would then forward them to Washington.