Fermanagh’s Trifoliate Flora
Archived: 22 September 2026
Labelled 30,863 BCE, this uncertain Late Pleistocene horizon falls within MIS 3, not a precisely recoverable Irish year. At Derryvree, Fermanagh, freshwater sediments between glacial tills record a local ice-free interval, dated to 36,900–31,700 years before present. Macrofossils and insects indicate cold, treeless, waterlogged tundra with sedges, mosses, bogbean, low shrubs and herbs, later buried by renewed ice. Castlepook Cave, Cork, preserves a mixed-age fauna including mammoth, reindeer, giant deer, predators and lemmings, showing productive open habitats. A possibly cut-marked reindeer bone suggests, but cannot prove, brief human contact; secure evidence is later. No societies or beliefs can be reconstructed.