For 30 years, archaeologists thought these bones were from cows — it turned out they were from a bear and a wild boar

Scientists have now examined the old fragments using protein analysis. The result was unexpected: there were no cow bones amongst them. The bones belonged to a bear and a wild boar. Thus, one of the best-known arguments in favour of the very early appearance of domesticated animals in Ireland has effectively vanished.

The ‘cow’ was older than Ireland’s first known farmers

The story began at the Ferriter’s Cove site — a small cove on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry.

Excavations were carried out here in the 1980s and 1990s under the direction of archaeologist Peter Woodman. Amongst stone tools, hearths, shells and the bones of wild animals, the researchers discovered several fragments which, based on their shape, they identified as the bones of domestic cattle.

One such bone was directly dated to 4450–4270 BC. This turned out to be an unexpectedly early date: reliable evidence of the spread of the Neolithic agricultural period in Ireland appears later, around the turn of the 5th and 4th millennia BC.

This gave rise to an intriguing theory: perhaps Irish Mesolithic hunter-gatherers had come into contact with farmers from continental Europe several centuries before agriculture finally spread across the island.

The find had puzzled archaeologists for decades

The ‘Kerry Cow’ did not fit well into the wider archaeological picture.

No other equally reliable evidence of domesticated animals of this age has been found in Ireland. Researchers have therefore put forward various explanations for this unusual find.

Perhaps it was a sign of a very early, but unsuccessful, attempt by farmers to settle on the island. Perhaps the animal itself did not reach Ireland, but a piece of meat was somehow brought to the hunter-gatherers from Britain or continental Europe.

Be that as it may, the famous bone continued to feature in scientific publications as the earliest presumed example of a domesticated animal on the islands of Ireland and Britain.

It has now transpired that there was no need to explain this mystery at all.

Modern analysis has revealed what could not be determined from the shape alone

Martin Musheron’s team from University College Dublin revisited the original material from Ferriter’s Cove, which is housed at University College Cork.

The bones were sent to the CNRS laboratory in Lille, France, and analysed using the ZooMS method – Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry.

This method allows the biological species to be identified based on collagen molecules preserved in the bone. Different groups of animals have slightly different protein sequences, so mass spectrometry provides a kind of molecular ‘fingerprint’.

The method is particularly useful for small or damaged bone fragments, which are difficult to identify reliably based on their appearance alone.

It was ZooMS that revealed that samples previously attributed to domestic livestock actually originated from a bear and a wild boar.

One of the main pieces of evidence for early livestock farming has disappeared

The implications of this misidentification are quite significant.

According to the researchers, following the exclusion of the Ferriter’s Cove bones, there is now no reliable archaeological evidence that domestic cattle were present in Ireland before 4000 BC.

The argument associated with this find regarding early contact between local Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers also disappears.

However, it is important not to go to the other extreme here.

The new study has not proven that agriculture appeared in Ireland later than previously thought. The main chronology of the Neolithic is based on a multitude of independent finds and has long since ceased to depend on a single ‘cow’.

Ferriter’s Cove was, above all, an exception to the general picture — an extremely early and controversial piece of evidence. That exception has now been removed.

The history of the emergence of farmers has not been rewritten from scratch

Even before this new analysis, the archaeological evidence suggested that the actual transition to agriculture took place considerably later than the supposed ‘Kerry cow’. Studies of the chronology of the Irish Neolithic point to a rapid increase in agricultural activity from around 3750 BC.

The new study rather revises the background to this transition.

Previously, it was thought that domesticated livestock or contact with farmers had appeared in Ireland hundreds of years before the Neolithic period was fully established. Now, the famous physical evidence supporting this theory can no longer be relied upon.

This brings the archaeological picture back to a simpler model: Mesolithic communities continued to live by hunting, gathering and fishing until, around 4000 BC, much more profound changes began on the island.

However, a new mystery has emerged – what sort of bear lived in Ireland?

The re-identification of the bones has solved one long-standing mystery only to create another.

Scientists have not yet established exactly which species of bear the remains belonged to. Further analyses are currently being carried out to help determine whether it was a brown bear or an animal genetically closer to polar bears.

Bears did indeed live in prehistoric Ireland before they disappeared from the region several thousand years ago.

Therefore, the bones themselves have by no means lost their scientific value now that they are no longer considered to be ‘cow bones’. On the contrary, they could potentially provide new insights into the history of Irish bears and their extinction.

For the time being, however, it is not possible to state that scientists have found a polar bear in Mesolithic Ireland — the species is still being identified.

Why archaeologists may have been mistaken for decades

The story of Ferriter’s Cove clearly illustrates why museum and university collections are worth re-examining from time to time.

Three decades ago, archaeologists relied heavily on the anatomical shape of bones. If only a small fragment has survived, it can be difficult to distinguish between similar skeletal elements of large mammals.

Modern molecular methods allow us to extract information that researchers simply did not have access to before.

ZooMS is already being used to identify poorly preserved bones of ancient humans and animals, and old archaeological collections are proving to be particularly promising material: sometimes, no new excavations are required at all to make a new discovery.

In this case, it was enough to revisit a few bones that had been lying in storage for decades for the famous ‘cow’ to vanish from Irish prehistory.

Source

Publication:“No sacred cows: ZooMS identification of the Late Mesolithic bone assemblage at Ferriter’s Cove, Co. Kerry, Ireland”.

Authors: Martin Moucheron, Graeme Warren, Kate Kanne, Benjamin Gearey, Margaret McCarthy, Barra Ó Donnabháin, Fabrice Bray, Lisa Garbé.

Publication: PAST 113, Summer 2026, The Prehistoric Society, pages 1–2.