Hyaena Hall’s Reindeer
Ireland was not yet at the fullest extent of the last British–Irish Ice Sheet. Earlier syntheses place the broad build-up of that ice sheet after about 35,000–32,000 years ago, with its maximum extent later, broadly around 27,000–21,000 years ago. More recent work has stressed that growth was regionally uneven and that evidence for pre-maximum ice is difficult to reconcile into one simple island-wide map. Thus it would be misleading to imagine either a wholly ice-covered Ireland or a uniformly open land in this nominal year. Ice margins, frozen ground, snow cover and drainage conditions changed across relatively short geological timescales.