Derryvree’s Bogbean Pool
Archived: 19 September 2026
31,197 BCE is a modern label within a broad Late Pleistocene interval, not a date for a known Irish event. At Derryvree, County Fermanagh, freshwater silts between glacial tills show locally ice-free conditions around 36,900–31,700 calibrated years ago, before maximum glaciation. Fossils indicate treeless, waterlogged tundra supporting low plants, insects and aquatic life. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, preserves remains of mammoths, reindeer, giant deer and predators, demonstrating changing cold-stage fauna. A possibly butchered reindeer bone suggests, but does not prove, human visitation. Ireland was an environmentally variable periglacial landscape, later extensively reshaped by expanding ice during the Last Glacial Maximum.