Caucasian moose
subspecies of mammal
The Caucasian elk, also known as the Caucasian moose (Alces alces caucasicus) is an extinct subspecies of elk (moose) found in the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains of Eastern Europe and Asia Minor, in modern-day European Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and eastern Turkey and north and west Iran.
Taxonomy
The subspecies was first described by Nikolay Kuzmich Vereshchagin in 1955. In 1999, Danilkin questioned whether they were sufficiently distinct from A. a. alces to merit a separate subspecies.
Extinction
The subspecies was quite common until the mid-19th century, when populations began to decrease due to overhunting. It became extinct sometime in the beginning of the 20th century.
Predators
Among its likely predators were the Anatolian or Persian leopard (also called the Caucasus leopard), Asiatic black bear, Eurasian brown bear, steppe wolves, the Asiatic lion (now restricted to India's Gir Forest) and the now-extinct Caspian tiger; The Eurasian lynx, golden eagles and the Asiatic cheetah—now restricted to Iran—all may have occasionally preyed on calves.
See also
List of extinct animals of Europe
Caucasian wisent
References
External links
Caucasian Moose – Extinct Archived 2011-04-22 at the Wayback Machine.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Caucasian moose” is subspecies of mammal. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Caucasian, moose and subspecies, not as a finished interpretation.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5054268. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1955, 1999 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Caucasian moose” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.