Menyanthes Under Derryvree
Archived: 16 September 2026
Approximately 31,530 BCE falls within Ireland’s climatically unstable Late Pleistocene, before the Last Glacial Maximum. Derryvree in Fermanagh preserves freshwater sediments between glacial tills, revealing a locally ice-free, periglacial wetland of sedges, mosses, bogbean and open tundra vegetation. Castlepook Cave in Cork contains disturbed remains of mammoth, reindeer, giant deer, bears, wolves and other cold-adapted animals, demonstrating intermittent connections with Eurasia. A possibly cut-marked reindeer bone may indicate human handling, but no confirmed occupation exists. Fragmentary evidence instead records changing environments, seasonal ecosystems and uncertain human presence across an unstable Atlantic frontier prior to more extensive ice-sheet growth in Ireland.