Doneraile’s Reindeer Trace
Ireland was not a timeless, uniformly frozen wasteland. MIS 3 was marked by sharp climatic fluctuations, and the growth of the British–Irish Ice Sheet was neither simple nor simultaneous in every region. Recent reconstructions emphasise that ice-sheet expansion and retreat differed around its perimeter. Modelling of conditions around 31,000 years BP has even produced small ice caps in north-west Ireland while not requiring an island-wide marine-based ice sheet at that moment. Other work argues that significant ice may have developed earlier in parts of the wider British–Irish system. The exact extent of ice over Ireland around 33,800 calendar years ago consequently remains debated.