| Eighty four new U-Th ages are presented for twenty randomly selected broken, displaced and reworked calcite speleothems retrieved from clastic sedimentary fill and from isolated bedding-plane shelves in Crag cave (SW Ireland). The dated pre-Holocene samples span much of the last glacial, ranging in age from 85.15 +/- 0.60 to 23.45 +/- 0.17 ka. Speleothem deposition requires the presence of liquid water, and because Crag cave is a shallow system, deposition is considered likely only when mean annual air temperatures (MAAT) exceed the freezing point of water. Deposition at this mid-latitude ocean-marginal site occurred episodically during MIS5a through to MIS2, synchronously within dating uncertainties, with the timing of Greenland Interstadials (GI). In the... |
