Catastrophic flood split Britain from Europe
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| Dam buster: Map showing ancient regional geography about 450,000 years ago. It depicts ice sheets, which expanded into northern Europe and Britain. The red line marks the damming of a massive lake by a rock ridge, which was later breached. Image: S. Gupta & A. Whitchurch | |
SYDNEY: Catastrophic megafloods isolated Britain from mainland Europe hundreds of thousands of years ago, say geologists, halting early human migration there.
Using high resolution sonar to study the morphology of the English Channel seafloor, experts from the Imperial College in London have identified evidence of not one, but two, monumental prehistoric floods. These were possibly the biggest in history.
"We have found a large, deep valley carved into the floor of the English Channel, which we believe was caused by high water volumes released during a catastrophic flood event," said study author Jenny Collier. "If this event had not happened, the U.K. would have remained a peninsular of Europe."
"Catastrophic flood event"
In their paper published in the journal Nature today, Collier and her co-author Sanjiv Gupta, reveal that high interglacial sea levels led to marine flooding of the English Channel and the North Sea sometime before 200,000 years ago.
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