Maguirebridge’s Tundra Mosses
This was an age of pronounced climatic instability, not a single, unchanging “Ice Age”. Ireland lay on the Atlantic fringe of north-west Europe, exposed to shifts in temperature, precipitation, sea level and the growth or retreat of ice. The great expansion of the last British–Irish Ice Sheet, conventionally associated with the Last Glacial Maximum, lay ahead. Current reconstructions place its most extensive later phase mainly between about 27,000 and 23,000 cal BP, though individual sectors developed differently and the history of ice growth remains actively refined. Around 33,800 cal BP, Ireland was therefore approaching a much harsher glacial world rather than already standing at its fullest ice-sheet extent.