Doggerland

and the point is...

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Thanks Chis, very interesting.

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Doggerland

That IS interesting. I got interrupted when I first read the link, so forgot to go one level deeper (no pun intended)...

That's a big bit of land

Findings suggest a picture of a land with hills and valleys, large swamps and lakes with major rivers dissecting a convoluted coastline.

As the sea rose the hills would have become an isolated archipelago of low islands.

By examining the fossil record (such as pollen grains, microfauna and macrofauna) the researchers could tell what kind of vegetation grew in Doggerland and what animals roamed there.

Using this information, they were able to build up a model of the "carrying capacity" of the land and work out roughly how many humans could have lived there.

The research team is currently investigating more evidence of human behaviour, including possible human burial sites, intriguing standing stones and a mass mammoth grave.

So we must have been quite high up in them thar days of old! (by that I mean us sea level lot where the waves now threaten to lap at our feet):)

Thanks for the post Chris, and the thread! :) I found something about a recently discovered fossil of a flying lizard and couldn't find anywhere to post it. This might be a good place - if I can find it again... :)

Doggerland

and the point is...

the convoluted coastline? :)

Very interesting :) Didn't know about these lands.

+1 me neither:)

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rOZZ
Music
Pictures

Forgive a slight digression (it's how my brain works - sorry :)) but, were sea levels to ever drop sufficiently, would that mean we'd stop being an island? :)

Yes. See the linked map of sea level during the last ice age, when more of Earth's water was frozen out of the ocean.
http://www.iceagenow.com/Sea_Level_During_Last_Ice_Age.htm

Yes. See the linked map of sea level during the last ice age, when more of Earth's water was frozen out of the ocean.
http://www.iceagenow.com/Sea_Level_During_Last_Ice_Age.htm

:) Thanks Michael :) (excellent map!) will start preparing my other half for the shock of ceasing to be an islander and becoming a continental instead. I know it's unlikely to happen in our lifetime, but... just in case... :)

More detailed map of UK area here

Fascinating to see that Britain was joined at two locations, and that the Baltic Sea was a lake, and how much of the coastal outline is all but unrecognisable.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

That is a really nice map WK, many thanks. It shows the Weald–Artois anticline before the English Channel was formed. God knows why Farnham was singled out. I'll have a look into that.

Mesolithic Dwellings at Farnham, Surrey

This morning there was a Time Team special on Doggerland, can be seen on 4OD - Britain's Stone Age Tsunami

Not sure where to put this, but it's sort of archaeology so am hoping Chris won't mind me plonking it in here :)

Shattering past of the 'island of glass': Pantelleria, a little-known island near Sicily, was once covered in a searing-hot layer of green glass

"Incandescent rock fragments suspended in the all-enveloping volcanic cloud were so hot, molten and sticky that they simply fused to the landscape forming a layer of glass, over hills and valleys alike. The hot glass then actually started flowing down all the slopes rather like sticky lava. 'Ground zero' in this case was the entire island -- nothing would have survived -- nature had sterilized and completely enamelled the island.

"Today Pantelleria is verdant and has been re-colonised, but even as you approach it by ferry you can see the green layer of glass covering everything -- even sea cliffs look like they've been draped in candle wax. Exactly how this happened has only recently come to light."