Ice Age rediscovered: North Sea was ice -free until 1.1 million years ago!

Norwegian geologists have examined the glacial history of the North Sea through new research and gained interesting findings. According to Junge Welt were discovered under the Meerschlick landscape forms that provide information about the ice age. Until about 1.1 million years ago, the North Sea was not icy and showed strong currents.

The studies show a continuous presence of large ice masses from Norway across the area. This questions the previous assumptions about glacier movements and interval -like re -discharge. During the ice age, the North Sea was covered by glaciers that were several hundred meters thick. About 12,000 years ago, defrosting the glaciers led to deep gorges and high cliffs in the region. This landscape, which was often called "Doggerland", was temporarily dry and populated by humans before it was conquered by the sea about 8,000 years ago.

new insights support changes in the previous model

In order to understand the exact processes of icing, there were uncertainties in the modeling of the advance of the ice masses and their time frame. According to previous models, there were several glacier advances and withdrawals. Now the research team around Dag Ottesen postulates that the icing started 1.9 or 1.8 million years ago. However, your preferred model assumes a one -off move of the inland ice about 1.1 million years ago.

This advance stored a layer of floors of up to 120 meters thickness over an area of ​​10,000 square kilometers. This thesis was verified by seismic 3D representations that were originally created for the search for natural gas and oil. In addition, the landscape forms are described as "pock torment", which indicates that they were created by water from deeper sediments. The sea water also deformed crater and formed elliptical furrows, which indicates strong currents in a largely ice -free North Sea until about 1.1 million years ago.

The parallel research results were also confirmed by Scinexx . The geologists there noticed that the North Sea was undisturbed until about 1.1 million years ago and stood the glacier advances from Norway. The newly discovered landscape forms under the North Sea slick, including round "pock grinding" and kilometers of kilometers, testify to the strong oceanic currents and help to revise earlier models that were made from continuous icing.