Mammoth Cave, Derryvree Silts
Archived: 9 September 2026
Abstract
About 31,862 BCE, Ireland lay within the volatile MIS 3 phase of the Late Pleistocene, before the Last Glacial Maximum. Derryvree sediments in Fermanagh indicate an ice-free but severe tundra wetland, supporting mosses, insects and freshwater life between roughly 36,900 and 31,700 years ago. Castlepook Cave in Cork preserves bones of mammoth, reindeer, giant deer, hyaena and other cold-adapted animals, although its deposits span millennia and do not represent one community. A possibly cut-marked reindeer bone suggests brief human activity, not settlement. Ireland was a changing landscape of wetlands, grazing animals, predators, caves and fluctuating ice during this remote period.
