Crag Cave’s Interstadial Drips
At this distance in time, Ireland was not a fixed physical stage. Ice sheets expanded and contracted, sea level changed, river systems altered course, and vegetation responded rapidly to shifts in temperature and moisture. MIS 3 was colder than the present but was not one uninterrupted freeze. Greenland ice-core records, cave mineral deposits and sediments across north-west Europe reveal abrupt alternations between comparatively milder interstadials and harsher stadials. Irish evidence preserves parts of that changing pattern, although rarely with enough resolution to reconstruct a particular decade, let alone a year.