Castlepook’s Cold-Stage Fauna
Archived: 8 September 2026
Circa 31,996 BCE, Ireland formed part of the climatically unstable MIS 3 cold stage, before the Last Glacial Maximum. Lower seas, shifting ice and treeless tundra-steppe environments shaped a landscape intermittently accessible to animals. Castlepook Cave in County Cork preserves bones of mammoth, reindeer, giant deer, bears, wolves, foxes, lemmings and hyaenas, demonstrating a varied cold-stage fauna, although deposits are mixed and cannot reconstruct a single ecosystem. A possibly butchered reindeer bone suggests transient Upper Palaeolithic visitors, but remains unconfirmed without securely stratified tools or settlements. Later glaciation and rising seas impoverished evidence. No settled human history can be inferred.