On the Eve of Expansion
31,801 BCE is a modern reference year within the Late Pleistocene rather than a precisely...
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The Last Habitable Landscapes
31,802 BCE is an archive reference year within the Late Pleistocene. No Irish event can...
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Cold Rivers and Open Ground
31,803 BCE is a modern reference year in a period for which Ireland has no...
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Ireland at the Glacial Edge
31,804 BCE is an archive reference year within the Late Pleistocene rather than a securely...
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Animals on the Ice-Age Plain
31,805 BCE is a modern archive reference year within the Late Pleistocene. Ireland preserves no...
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Fermanagh Before Glaciation
31,806 BCE is used as an archive reference year within the Late Pleistocene. No single...
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Castlepook in the Cold
31,807 BCE is a modern archive reference point within the Late Pleistocene. No Irish event...
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Tundra Before the Ice
31,808 BCE is an archive reference year within the Late Pleistocene. Ireland preserves no event...
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Hyaena Land at Castlepook
Around 31,810 BCE, Ireland lay within a changing Late Pleistocene landscape as the British–Irish Ice Sheet began expanding. Evidence from Derryvree, County Fermanagh, indicates treeless tundra, freshwater habitats and cold-adapted plants during an earlier ice-free interval. Castlepook Cave in north Cork produced remains of mammoth, reindeer, giant deer, bears, wolves, foxes, lemmings and spotted hyaenas, demonstrating intermittent links with continental fauna. A marked reindeer femur may indicate human butchery around 31,000 BCE, but lacks securely associated tools or occupation evidence. Any human presence remains hypothetical. Lower sea levels altered routes, while advancing ice later reduced habitable land and destroyed evidence.
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