Many of us were intrigued by the discovery the other day of an antlered skull of a giant Irish deer (Megaloceros giganteus) "dating from Ireland's dinosaur era" in Donegal. The same report in this paper then informed us that this species of deer, which stood two metres high at the shoulder, is thought to have died out some 10,500 years ago.
There is an obvious contradiction here, though I may simply have misread the thing, in the way I did the recent report about "large farmers' children" getting a large proportion of university grants. This provoked visions of enormous young rural men and women, with their bright-red faces glowing healthily, striding head, shoulders and stomachs above everyone else in colleges all over the country, chewing on greenery and anything else within reach as they flash their grant cheques about.
A complete misreading, of course. Getting back to the giant Irish deer, I would not claim to be an expert archaeologist, though I do have a special interest in the Lower Palaeolithic period (the good old days of Australopithecus and homo erectus) and indeed played a small part, along with Bernabo Brea, in excavating the famous Arena Candide cave at Finale Ligure on the Italian Riviera some decades ago, which you will recall revealed an interesting stratigraphy from the Upper Palaeolithic period right up to the Late Neolithic.
However, I was under the impression that dinosaurs died out not 10,500 years ago, but a little over 65 million years ago, at a time when there were no other mammals existing, apart from some sort of shrew, which the carnivorous dinosaurs probably used for snacking on. Then again, it may be that the shrew was the period's nagging woman (mulier importuna), which was succeeded by uxor querula when marriage got popular. This creature is far from extinct, of course.
It must follow from the newspaper report either that Ireland's dinosaur era continued for close to 65 million years after the creatures died out elsewhere, or that it simply continued in Donegal. There is much circumstantial evidence to support the latter theory. Donegal has always been a remote and mysterious area, subject to few of the laws, natural or man-made, that govern the rest of the island.
Further, no one has yet studied the mysterious effects on Donegal of the Gulf Stream, a branch of which reaches this part of Ireland from the Caribbean. Who knows what it brings with it? Apart from its eroded plateau bogs, its glaciated Tertiary mountains and the humble urnfields of Stranorlar, the entire county is a sort of lush rainforest, its undergrowth a spongy mass dotted with vast unexplored caves, its villages reminscent of the Stone Age and its town life very often a drink-sodden gale-lashed throwback to the days of early man. It is little wonder that tourists are both drawn there and repelled.
Many of Donegal's people, too, still betray evidence of Pleistocene man - the low brows, the tendency to premature baldness, the excitable temperament, the clinging to Q-Celtic speech, their renowned hospitality in the home and the stoic way in which they have always put a brave face on things as prosperity passes them by.
Since we now know that the dinosaur age ended in Donegal only yesterday (in archaeological terms) it cannot be too long until a survivor actually turns up. We are greatly optimistic following the recent report in the British papers about Cameron Munro, the three-year-old boy who stayed out all night in the freezing Scottish Highlands in order to look for dinosaurs. He disappeared into the woods in the afternoon, leaving his distraught mother calling after him. By that evening more than 200 people were out looking for him in the dark and the cold.
The adventurous Cameron was eventually discovered by a dog called Rosie, and was in excellent health after a sound sleep beside a fallen tree. And had he found his dinosaurs? He had indeed - two of them, one "big" and one "tiny". Both of these he had admired, and then, when they got too close for comfort, driven off with his stick.
It is not a question of suspending disbelief. We must put as much faith in the claims of three-year-old boys as in national newspapers. It is only a matter of keeping our eyes and ears open, and any day now in Donegal we may espy the supposedly extinct mammoth (mammathus primigenius), the Arctic fox (alopex lagopus), the brown bear (ursus arclos) and the wild horse (equus caballus).
Times Square will return on October 26th