Elephant Hall’s Mammoth Rib
Ireland was in the last Ice Age, but it should not be pictured automatically as a uniform white wilderness or as an island continuously buried beneath ice. MIS 3 was climatically unstable. Ice margins, sea level, vegetation and animal ranges altered repeatedly over long timescales. The later Last Glacial Maximum, when ice became far more extensive over Ireland, lay in the future. Modern reconstructions of the British–Irish Ice Sheet begin their detailed sequence at 31,000 years ago and demonstrate a dynamic history of growth and retreat rather than a single, unchanging advance. For the earlier point represented by 31,828 BCE, local conditions remain less securely resolved.