Ireland's first wildcat has been discovered dated to 5,500 years ago from a cave in the Burren

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Hi, Dr. Marion [music] Dow from ATU here. We've had some very exciting news this week. We've had the first [music] confirmed wildcat from Ireland. So, the cat came from Glenn Curran Cave in the Burren, County Clare. We have 39 bones from this cat, [music] and they were radiocarbon dated indicating this cat dates to the Neolithic period. Uh, it's 5 and 1/2 thousand years old. Ancient DNA analysis carried out in Italy confirmed that this is wildcat, which is a completely distinct species from domesticated cat, and it raises questions as [music] to when wildcat was first introduced to Ireland, and also when it became extinct. And at the moment, we don't know the answers to those questions, but this is the first confirmed [music] sample that we have.