Derryvree’s Willow Marsh
Archived: 19 September 2026
Abstract
31,190 BCE is a modern label within a broad Late Pleistocene range, not a recoverable Irish year. At Derryvree, County Fermanagh, organic freshwater sediments between two tills demonstrate a local ice-free interval, supporting a treeless, periglacial wetland of sedges, grasses, mosses, herbs, juniper and insects. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, preserves mixed remains of cold-stage mammals, including mammoth, reindeer and hyaena, but cannot reconstruct a contemporary fauna. A potentially cut-marked reindeer bone suggests, without proving, brief human presence. No settlements, polities or trade are evidenced. Advancing ice later reshaped Ireland and erased much evidence from this remote period across the island.