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An Anglo-French study has revealed that long before the English Channel there was a giant river which ran south from an area of the North Sea. Previous research found that 500,000 years ago a range of low hills connected Britain to Europe between the Weald in South-East England and Artois in northern France. But during a series of ice ages beginning 450,000 years ago huge ice sheets covered much of northern Europe, trapping a portion of the North Sea the size of East Anglia. The great rivers of Europe poured into this lake at the southern end of the North...

The Yarlung-Tsangpo River in southern Asia drops rapidly through the Himalaya Mountains on its way to the Bay of Bengal, losing about 7,000 feet of elevation through the precipitously steep Tsangpo Gorge. For the first time, scientists have direct geochemical evidence that the 150-mile long gorge, possibly the world's deepest, was the conduit by which megafloods from glacial lakes, perhaps half the volume of Lake Erie, drained suddenly and catastrophically through the Himalayas when their ice dams failed at times during the last 2 million years... In this case, the water moved rapidly through bedrock gorge, carving away the base...

Geologists long rejected the notion that cataclysmic flood had ever occurred—until one of them found proof of a Noah-like catastrophe in the wildly eroded river valleys of Washington State. After teaching geology at the University of Washington for a decade, I had become embarrassed that I hadn’t yet seen the deep canyons where tremendous Ice Age floods scoured down into solid rock to sculpt the scablands. So I decided to help lead a field trip for students to see the giant erosion scars on the local landforms.We drove across the Columbia River and continued eastward, dropping into Moses Coulee, a...

Channel's key role in pre-history By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News, Gibraltar The remains we find today tell a story of Britain's ancient past A study of prehistoric animals has revealed the crucial role of the English Channel in shaping the course of Britain's natural history. The Channel acted as a filter, letting some animals in from mainland Europe, but not others. Even at times of low sea level, when Britain was not an island, the Channel posed a major barrier to colonisation. This was because a massive river system flowed along its bed, UK researchers told a palaeo-conference...

Migrants Poured into Britain after Ice Age By John von Radowitz, Science Correspondent, PA News Britain experienced a tidal wave of immigration as soon as the last Ice Age ended, new data has shown. Previously it was thought that Britain’s repopulation was a slow process led by a few pioneering explorers. Researchers now know that humans responded rapidly to climate change and moved into Britain en masse as soon as the ice receded. Up to 20,000 years ago a huge ice sheet extended as far south as Norfolk. Then temperatures rose rapidly, producing warming weather than we have now. Once...

Flood made Britain into an island 'in 24 hours' By Tim Hall (Filed: 25/09/2006) Britain may have become an island after a Biblical-style flood split it from Europe in less than 24 hours, according to new geological research. The flood would have taken place between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, sweeping away hills between Britain and what is now France. The theory could rewrite British prehistory, as current text-books teach that Britain - once a peninsula of continental Europe - split from the great land mass after a long process of erosion and rises in sea levels. However, surveys of...

Biblical-style flood tore Britain from France Jonathan Leake September 25, 2006 SCIENTISTS have found that Britain owes its island status to a catastrophic flood that swept away in less than 24 hours the hills that once joined the land mass to France. The flood, which took place between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, instantly turned Britain from being a peninsula of continental Europe into a separate entity, changing forever the way it would develop. The finding has emerged from an advanced sonar survey of the sea bed of the English Channel that revealed huge scour marks, deep bowls and piles...

SCIENTISTS have found that Britain owes its island status to a catastrophic flood that swept away in less than 24 hours the hills that once joined the land mass to France. The flood, which took place between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, instantly turned Britain from being a peninsula of continental Europe into a separate entity, changing forever the way it would develop. The finding has emerged from an advanced sonar survey of the sea bed of the English Channel that revealed huge scour marks, deep bowls and piles of rock that could have been created only by a giant...

Study: Megaflood Separated U.K., France Jul 18, 4:22 PM (ET) By THOMAS WAGNER LONDON (AP) - One of Earth's largest-ever megafloods broke apart a strip of land connecting what is now Britain and France, permanently separating them, a new study says. The flood unleashed about 35 million cubic feet of water per second, 100 times greater than the water discharge of the Mississippi River. The natural disaster, which occurred about 400,000 years ago during a glacial period, was later followed by rising sea levels that created what is now the English Channel, the study says. It is not known if...

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Scientists say they have found the trigger of a sharp cooling 13,000 years ago that plunged Europe into a mini ice age. Mark Bateman from the University of Sheffield in England said a catastrophic flood unleashed from a giant North American lake dumped large amounts of freshwater into the Arctic Ocean. This led to the shutting down of the Gulf Stream ocean circulation pattern that brings warmth to Europe. "We're talking about a lake the size of the UK emptying very quickly," Bateman told Reuters by telephone. "We don't know the exact period of time but we're...

Last Updated: Wednesday, 18 July 2007, 18:08 GMT 19:08 UK Megaflood 'made Island Britain' By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News The megaflood made Britain what it is today, geographicallyBritain became separated from mainland Europe after a catastrophic flood some time before 200,000 years ago, a sonar study of the English Channel confirms. The images reveal deep scars on the Channel bed that must have been cut by a sudden, massive discharge of water. Some event, or combination of events, resulted in a huge lake breaching the chalk ridge between what is now Dover and Calais. Scars from the torrent...

The cultural rift between Britain and France endures as an amusing mystery for many, but the physical divide between them can now be blamed on two ancient floods. About 450,000 years ago, a "megaflood" breached a giant natural dam near the Dover strait and began the formation of the English Channel , according to a study detailed in the July 19 issue of the journal Nature. Following this first disastrous flood, a second deluge finished the job. "The first was probably 100 times greater than the average discharge of the Mississippi River," said Sanjeev Gupta, a geologist at Imperial College...