In fact, faint traces of elk do linger on in Scotland’s cultural memory. So it seems pretty unlikely that the Scottish elk died out 4000 years ago because of climate change, and much more likely they disappeared because of human pressures, quite possibly much later. However, the elk is still a widespread and common species in many parts of Northern Europe today, including in some very rainy parts of Norway, and is recolonising areas where historical deforestation and over-hunting pushed them out. Around four thousand years ago is also when our climate appears to have taken a turn for the wetter, so it has been suggested that elk died out naturally because of an unsuitable climate. The most recent radiocarbon date (from a bone found in the estuary of the River Cree in SW Scotland) is around 4000 years BP, so it's often described as having gone extinct in Scotland, and the UK in general, at that time (it's funny how often the most recent carbon date for a species is equated to its extinction date!). We know from bone remains found from Dumfriesshire in the south to Caithness in the north that the elk (or moose as it’s known in North America) used to inhabit Scotland. When Hercules the bull elk escaped from his enclosure on a private Perthshire estate in 2014, eventually being recaptured several miles away by the side of the A9 trunk road in the southern part of the Cairngorms National Park, he was the first free-ranging member of his species to wander the Scottish Highlands for a very long time.
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