Although often associated with Western Europe where remains were first documented, Megaloceros was actually widespread across Eurasia. The type species of Megaloceros, M. giganteus, is by far the largest and is more commonly known as the ‘Irish Elk’, ‘Irish Deer’ or just simply ‘Giant Deer’. As a genus however, Megaloceros shows a varied number of sizes across its many species, some of which strongly support the idea of insular dwarfism. This is where isolated populations on small bodies of land grow smaller with successive populations so that they do not eat up all of the plants and end up starving into extinction. Aside from Megaloceros another Pleistocene mammal that displays strong insular dwarfism is the pygmy mammoth Mammuthus exilis.