Animals on the Ice-Age Plain31801 BCE
Dateline
31,805 BCE is a modern archive reference year within the Late Pleistocene. Ireland preserves no exact event for this date. Cave remains and environmental deposits instead describe a cold landscape undergoing major climatic change.
Ice-Age Fauna
Castlepook Cave preserves evidence of reindeer, mammoth, giant deer, bear, wolf and spotted hyaena from the wider period. These finds help reconstruct the ecology of Ireland before later glaciation.
Changing Ground
Open habitats could persist locally while ice expanded elsewhere. Later glacial activity removed many earlier surfaces, leaving a fragmentary record.
Primary Sources
Research draws on National Museum collections, Castlepook studies, Derryvree environmental evidence, BRITICE-CHRONO and radiocarbon calibration research.
