Fermanagh’s Glacial Reedlands
Archived: 21 September 2026
Around 30,982 BCE, Ireland was entering a worsening Late Pleistocene climate, as ice expansion increasingly reshaped land, habitats and routes for animals. Evidence cannot reconstruct conditions in a single year. At Derryvree, County Fermanagh, sediments between glacial tills preserve an earlier MIS 3 freshwater tundra, with sedges, aquatic plants, dwarf willow and arctic-alpine mosses, demonstrating an ice-free cold interval. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, records varied Ice Age fauna, but its mixed deposits cannot date species precisely. A possibly cut-marked reindeer bone suggests early human contact, though no settlement is proven. Later glaciation destroyed much evidence, leaving a provisional environmental history.