Castlepook’s Late MIS 3 Fauna
Archived: 7 October 2026
Abstract
Labelled 30,130 BCE, this period falls in late Marine Isotope Stage 3, as Ireland moved towards, but had not reached, maximum glaciation. Conditions were cold, open and changing, with lower seas and unstable ice margins linking Ireland ecologically to north-west Europe. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, preserves Ireland’s principal pre-maximum vertebrate archive, including mammoth, giant deer, reindeer, bear, hyena, lemmings, Arctic fox and wolf. Its mixed, disturbed deposits cannot date all species together, though modern redating has revised ages older. The evidence indicates mobile Ice Age fauna in patchy tundra-like habitats, not human settlement. Secure human activity appears 12,800 years ago.