Derryvree’s Bogbean Seed
Archived: 18 September 2026
About 31,306 BCE, Ireland lay within the climatically unstable Late Pleistocene, although no precise event can be dated to that year. At Derryvree, County Fermanagh, freshwater silts between glacial tills, radiocarbon-dated broadly to 34,950–29,750 BCE, preserve a temporary periglacial wetland. Bogbean, mosses, sedges, grasses, juniper, insects and other fossils indicate open, treeless tundra-like ground with pools and seasonal thaw. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, records cold-stage mammals, including mammoth, giant deer, reindeer and hyaena, across a long timespan. No secure human settlement is known; a possible cut-marked bone remains uncertain. Advancing ice later overwhelmed such local ecosystems, preceding the glacial maximum.