In January and February 2014, severe Atlantic storms eroded a low, stepped face of sand and peaty soil on Cruach Na Cara, and what came to light in the aftermath was a pelvis and, about 0.7 metres to the south, two long-bones, the remnants of at least two separate burials lying just above a smooth bedrock shore.

The find came to light through field-walking carried out in the storms' wake, communicated by M. Gibbons, and it sits in a location that quietly compounds its significance. The burials were eroding from a face roughly 58 metres south-east of St. MacDara's Church, one of the most celebrated early medieval sites in Connacht, and they lay below a cross slab that overlooks the island's landing area. Cross slabs are early Christian grave markers, usually bearing an incised cross, and their presence near a shoreline often signals that a burial ground extended further than later visitors assumed. These were not isolated bones washed in by the sea; they belonged to a landscape already layered with early ecclesiastical use. Cruach Na Cara was also not alone in giving up its dead that winter: the same storms revealed previously unrecorded burials at two other locations in the same general area, suggesting that erosion had been quietly working at the edges of sites that field survey had long considered known quantities.

The exposed position of the remains, sitting in a peaty, sandy matrix only about 1.5 metres high before it meets bare rock, means ongoing coastal erosion remains a real concern for whatever else may survive beneath the surface.