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.