Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Megaflood Made Britain An Island

This is old news but Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science has a repost with a nice map showing the effects of the Pleistocene flooding event which made Britain into an island. The North Sea breached the Weald-Artois anticline , a chalk ridge separating the North Sea from the English Channel. A bathymetric map of the English Channel derived from high-resolution sonar shows clearly the deep valleys scoured out by the rush of water flowing westwards.


A dramatic example of landscape evolution and one with consequences for Britain's subsequent cultural and social evolution.

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