Derryvree’s Last Open Season
Archived: 4 October 2026
Around 30,300 BCE, a modern approximation rather than a precise recoverable date, Ireland was a cold, changing Ice Age landscape during Marine Isotope Stage 3. Organic sediments at Derryvree, County Fermanagh, deposited between glacial advances, preserve sedges, mosses, dwarf willow and aquatic plants, indicating treeless periglacial wetland. Cave remains at Castlepook, County Cork, document mammals including reindeer, mammoth, giant deer, bears, wolves and hyaenas, though they represent different episodes. A cut-marked reindeer bone may indicate an early human visit, not settlement. Increasing ice eventually transformed Ireland, while later deposits preserved only fragmentary environmental and faunal evidence from this broad interval.