Related Archive: Irish Quaternary Fauna Project

Castlepook’s Deep-Time Femur

Archived: 17 September 2026

Abstract

At roughly 33,455 calibrated years BP, Ireland lay within the climatically unstable Marine Isotope Stage 3, when shifting ice, lower seas and altered coastlines created a cold, changing landscape. Later glaciation and submergence have erased much evidence, but Castlepook Cave in County Cork preserves Pleistocene fauna, including reindeer, mammoth, horse, giant deer and predators, demonstrating that parts of Ireland supported open-country ecosystems. A deeply incised reindeer femur may record fresh-bone processing with a stone tool and thus a brief Upper Palaeolithic human visit. However, uncertain dating and disturbed deposits preclude claims for settlement, hunting, identity or political and social institutions.

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31534 BCE

Castlepook’s Cutmark

Archived: 16 September 2026

Abstract

31,534 BCE is not a recoverable Irish calendar year, but lies within Marine Isotope Stage 3, an unstable Pleistocene period. Lower sea levels altered connections with Britain and Europe, while ice-free areas supported open steppe-tundra, wetlands and cold-adapted plants. Derryvree deposits demonstrate such environments. Castlepook Cave preserves mixed animal remains, including mammoth, reindeer, giant deer and hyena, accumulated over millennia rather than as one community. A cutmarked reindeer femur c. 31,000 BCE may provide Ireland’s earliest evidence of human carcass processing. It cannot prove hunting, settlement or colonisation. Glaciation, flooding and early excavation left fragmentary evidence of potential visits there.

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