Awbeg’s Cave Fauna
Ireland around this broad horizon was neither the familiar green, wooded island of later prehistory nor necessarily a single, uniformly frozen wilderness. The later maximum of the British–Irish Ice Sheet is generally placed after this period, reaching its fullest extent around 27,000 years ago and persisting into the following millennia. Before that maximum, ice margins, sea levels and climates changed repeatedly. Some areas were glaciated at particular times; others supported open ground, freshwater and animal life. Subsequent ice advances eroded or buried much of the evidence, which is a major reason why the Irish record is so fragmentary.