Fermanagh’s Wetland Interlude
Archived: 19 September 2026
Around 31,126 BCE, Ireland lay within the unstable Late Pleistocene climate of Marine Isotope Stage 3, before maximum glaciation. At Derryvree, County Fermanagh, freshwater silts between glacier deposits, dated broadly to 34,950–29,750 BCE, preserve evidence of a tundra wetland. Sedges, mosses, bogbean, dwarf willow, insects and pollen indicate cold, open, treeless terrain with seasonal water. Cave remains from Castlepook, County Cork, show cold-adapted fauna including mammoth, reindeer, giant deer and predators, although their contemporaneity is uncertain. No secure human settlement is known; a possibly cut-marked reindeer bone suggests only a potential brief Upper Palaeolithic visit. Subsequent ice advance buried them.