BIRM-166’s Mossland Basin
Archived: 18 September 2026
Labelled 31,299 BCE, this period cannot be identified as a precise Irish historical year, but falls within a broad late Marine Isotope Stage 3 interval. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater and organic sediments between glacial tills, showing locally ice-free, biologically productive tundra-like wetland conditions. Its radiocarbon date BIRM-166 calibrates broadly to 36,900–31,700 years before present. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, records reindeer, mammoth and hyaena from changing pre-maximum glacial faunas. A marked reindeer femur may indicate human butchery, but proves neither settlement nor population. Evidence instead reveals intermittent ecological opportunities before later glaciation, not continuous habitation, societies, or events with certainty.