Derryvree’s Coldwater Sedges
Archived: 17 September 2026
Around 31,382 BCE, Ireland lay within the unstable later Marine Isotope Stage 3, although no event can be dated precisely to that year. Derryvree, County Fermanagh, preserves freshwater sediments between glacial tills, indicating cold, open periglacial terrain with sedges, mosses, aquatic plants and insects during an ice-free interval. Other deposits confirm that Ireland was not continuously ice-covered. Castlepook Cave, County Cork, contains remains of mammoth, giant deer, reindeer, hyaena and other cold-adapted animals. A marked reindeer bone may indicate human butchery, but no secure settlement evidence exists. Later glaciation destroyed much earlier evidence, limiting reconstruction to environmental and faunal traces.