Awbeg Limestone Fauna
Ireland was not yet at the Last Glacial Maximum, when the British–Irish Ice Sheet expanded dramatically and covered much of the island. That later maximum is generally placed around 27,000–23,000 years ago in the Irish Sea and Celtic Sea sectors, with substantial regional variation in the timing and behaviour of ice. Around the present horizon, conditions were cold, unstable and markedly different from those of modern Ireland, but it is unsafe to picture the whole island as either continuously ice-covered or uniformly open. Glaciers, permafrost, snow cover, exposed ground and vegetated refuges changed across both space and time.