BIRM-166’s Fermanagh Silts
Archived: 27 September 2026
At Derryvree, County Fermanagh, freshwater silts sealed between glacial tills record a locally ice-free episode during Marine Isotope Stage 3. Radiocarbon dating of organic material, though incapable of fixing events to 30,610 BCE, places the deposit broadly within 36,900–31,700 calibrated years before present. Its wetland flora, insects and sediments reveal treeless tundra, cold shallow water and short growing seasons. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, preserves fauna including mammoth, reindeer, hyaena and Arctic fox, indicating cold open habitats. A possibly cut-marked reindeer bone suggests, but does not prove, fleeting human activity. Evidence supports an intermittently habitable, environmentally unstable Ireland, without settled communities.