Derryvree’s Tundra Sedgebeds
Archived: 9 September 2026
Around 31,860 BCE, Ireland cannot be described through a precise annual chronology, but through uncertain environmental evidence from Marine Isotope Stage 3. At Derryvree, County Fermanagh, organic silts beneath later till record an ice-free, cold landscape of sedges, mosses, wet basins and open tundra-like vegetation. Ice-sheet advance and retreat varied regionally, altering drainage and relative sea levels. Revised cave-bone dates from southern Ireland show brown bears, giant deer, hyaenas and mammoths during broad MIS 3 phases. No accepted evidence demonstrates human settlement then. Later glaciation destroyed much evidence, leaving a fragmentary prehistory interpreted through calibrated ranges, sediments, fossils and probabilities.