Moose have long been extinct in southern Germany.
How long is it not known.
However, a sensational find in Haspelmoor proves that the animals have been at home here for much longer than previously assumed.
Haspelmoor - wild boars are not always welcome guests with the hunters because they like to dig up the forest floor.
In this case, however, they uncovered a sensation: a piece of elk antlers.
"A hunting helper saw it in a wild boar cave," reports the former district home keeper Toni Drexler.
The hunting tenant brought it to the proven Haspelmoor connoisseur.
And he was pricked up.
investigation
Drexler handed the antler over to Professor Joris Peters from the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. From there, a sample of the antlers was sent to a specialized laboratory in Mannheim, where it was examined using the radiocarbon method. This allows the age of finds to be precisely determined. The sensation: The antlers are dated to the fifth century after the birth of Christ, more precisely to the year 478 - a time when the animals were considered to have long since died out.
A project at the University of Augsburg, initiated by the archaeologist Caroline von Nicolai, also deals with the extinction history of various animal species.
She had already cheered last year when similar antlers were fished out of the Eibsee.
The find at that time was considered to be the latest evidence of moose in southern Germany.
It was dated to the fifth century BC - around 1000 years earlier than the antlers from the Haspelmoor.
Theory
Why elks reappeared during the transition from Roman times to the early Middle Ages, Nicolai and district home administrator Markus Wild have a theory.
“During this time, the population has declined,” says the archaeologist.
Wild adds: "The Roman villas in the country were abandoned at that time." The Bavarians would probably have settled in the region later.
The fact that animal populations recover when human intervention subsides is currently also evident in eastern Bavaria.
Lately, living moose that immigrate from the east have been spotted there again and again.
Something similar could have happened to the elk from Haspelmoor.
Wild: "The decline in civilization pressure and hunting could have led to moose reappearing."
The sensational find will soon be exhibited in the Bruck City Museum.