Doneraile’s Reindeer Landscape
Ireland was approaching, but had not yet reached, the maximum expansion of the last British–Irish Ice Sheet. That later maximum is now generally placed around 26,000 calendar years ago, with the greatest ice volume following several millennia later. Around the notional year considered here, cold conditions certainly prevailed, but neither temperature nor ice cover was uniform across the island. MIS 3 was punctuated by abrupt shifts between relatively milder interstadials and severe stadials. The island’s terrain was consequently altered by frost, seasonal thaw, wind, snow and moving water as well as by the fluctuating margins of ice.