Derryvree’s Tundra Silt
MIS 3 broadly covers the interval before the most extensive phase of the last British–Irish Ice Sheet. It was not a single, unchanging “Ice Age”. Greenland ice-core records and Irish cave mineral deposits both indicate abrupt alternations between colder stadials and relatively milder interstadials. At Crag Cave in County Kerry, uranium-thorium dates show that stalagmites formed episodically during the last glacial period. Because liquid water was needed for their growth, these phases provide strong evidence that south-west Ireland sometimes experienced conditions above freezing, although they do not by themselves reveal the precise appearance of the landscape outside the cave at 31,831 BCE.