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Thousands of years ago, a swath of land along what is now the western coast of England served as a superhighway for humans and animals alike. Today, the ebb and flow of each passing tide reveals more of the ancient footprints that these long-gone travelers stamped into the once mud-caked route.Reminders of their travels can be seen along a nearly 2-mile-long (3 kilometers) stretch of coastline near Formby, England. The footprint beds show how, as glaciers melted and sea levels rose after the last ice age ended around 11,700 years ago, humans and animals were forced inland, thus forming a...

One of the tunnel valleys revealed by the seismic data. (James Kirkham) The hidden scars left on the landscape during ice ages thousands to millions of years ago have now been imaged in spectacular detail. Using a technique called reflection seismology, a team of scientists has imaged enormous gouges carved by subglacial rivers, buried hundreds of meters below the floor of the North Sea. Called 'tunnel valleys', these features can help us understand how frozen landscapes change in response to a warming climate. "The origin of these channels was unresolved for over a century. This discovery will help us better...

A landslide in northern Norway on June 3rd, 2020. (Large chunk of land containing farms slides into the sea) Video Here.

Deep beneath the North Sea, scientists have discovered a fossilized forest that could hold traces of prehistoric early humans who lived there around 10,000 years ago, before the land slipped beneath the waves a few thousand years later. The discovery gives the researchers new hope in their search for "lost" Middle Stone Age — or Mesolithic — settlements of hunter-gatherers, because the find shows that they have found a particular type of exposed ancient landscape.

'Scientists are set to reveal the secrets of Doggerland, an ancient landscape that was wiped out by a tsunami about 8,200 years ago, then fully submerged by rising sea levels following the end of the last Ice Age. Archaeologists, biologists and computer scientists will digitally reconstruct the prehistoric country following a €2.5m (£1.8m, $2.7m) advanced research grant from the European Research Council. Scientists expect to learn how it developed over 5,000 years, revealing clues as to how people living there moved from hunter-gatherer lifestyles into farming.'

Southeastern Norway is the most populous part of Norway today. Based on an analysis of more than 150 settlements along Oslo Fjord, the area apparently also appealed to Stone Age people. Eleven thousand years ago at the end of the last ice age, Norway was buried under a thick layer of ice. But it didn't take long for folks to wander their way north as the ice sheet melted away. The first traces of human habitation in Norway date from roughly 9500 BC. Steinar Solheim is an archaeologist at the University of Oslo's Museum of Cultural History who has worked...

Source: University of Southampton Date: August 5, 2007 Stone Age Site Surfaces After 8000 Years Science Daily — Excavations of an underwater Stone Age archaeological settlement dating back 8000 years took place at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton between 30 July – 3 August 2007. A diver working at the site just off the Isle of Wight coast. (Credit: Copyright Simon Brown 2007) Maritime archaeologists from the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology (HWTMA) have been working at the site just off the Isle of Wight coast. Divers working at depths of 11 metres have raised sections of the...

Archaeologists working on Stone Age remains at a site in North Yorkshire say it contains Britain's earliest surviving house.The team from the Universities of Manchester and York reveal today that the home dates to at least 8,500 BC - when Britain was part of continental Europe. The research has been made possible by a grant from the Natural Environment Research Council, early excavation funding from the British Academy, and from English Heritage who are about to schedule the site as a National Monument . The Vale of Pickering Research Trust has also provided support for the excavation works. The research...

Scientists discover lost world A prehistoric lost world under the North Sea has been mapped by scientists from the University of Birmingham. The team used earthquake data to devise a 3D reconstruction of the 10,000-year-old plain. The area, part of a land mass that once joined Britain to northern Europe, disappeared about 8,000 years ago. The virtual features they have developed include a river the length of the Thames which disappeared when its valley flooded due to glaciers melting. This is the most exciting and challenging virtual reality project since Virtual Stonehenge. Professor Bob Stone Professor Bob Stone, head of...

Divers have found traces of ancient land swallowed by waves 8500 years ago Doggerland once stretched from Scotland to Denmark Rivers seen underwater by seismic scans Britain was not an island - and area under North Sea was roamed by mammoths and other giant animals Described as the 'real heartland' of Europe Had population of tens of thousands - but devastated by sea level risesBritain's Atlantis' - a hidden underwater world swallowed by the North Sea - has been discovered by divers working with science teams from the University of St Andrews. Doggerland, a huge area of dry land that...

Lost world warning from North Sea By Sean Coughlan BBC News education How a homestead might have looked in the flooded area Archaeologists are uncovering a huge prehistoric "lost country" hidden below the North Sea. This lost landscape, where hunter gatherer communities once lived, was swallowed by rising water levels at the end of the last ice age. University of Birmingham researchers are heralding "stunning" findings as they map the "best-preserved prehistoric landscape in Europe". This large plain had disappeared below the water more than 8,000 years ago. Scientists at the University of Birmingham have been using oil exploration technology...

Stone Age Settlements Found Underwater in Britain Thu Sep 11, 5:38 AM ET LONDON (Reuters) - Archaeologists have stumbled across the first underwater evidence of Stone Age settlements in Britain. Missed Tech Tuesday? Become a Wireless Whiz -- get connected in every room and secure your wireless network in six steps A team from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England say they found flint artifacts including tools and arrowheads off the coast near Tynemouth during a training session to prepare them for dive searches elsewhere. They say the items pinpoint two sites dating as far back as...

The coastline and landscape of what would become modern Britain began to emerge at the end of the last Ice Age around 10,000 years ago. What had been a cold, dry tundra on the north-western edge of Europe grew warmer and wetter as the ice caps melted. The Irish Sea, North Sea and the Channel were all dry land, albeit land slowly being submerged as sea levels rose. But it wasn't until 6,100BC that Britain broke free of mainland Europe for good, during the Mesolithic period -- the Middle Stone Age. It is thought a landslide in Norway triggered one...

Nature experts have discovered a remarkable submerged forest thousands of years old under the sea close to the Norfolk coast. The trees were part of an area known as 'Doggerland' which formed part of a much bigger area before it was flooded by the North Sea. It was once so vast that hunter-gatherers who lived in the vicinity could have walked to Germany across its land mass.

As they map Germany's changing coastline, members of a research team called SINCOS are learning about settlements that were covered by water 6000 to 8000 years ago On a warm afternoon in September, archaeologist Harald Lübke looked out from the pilot house of the Goor, a bright red dive boat moored 200 meters off Germany's Baltic seacoast. Three meters below the water's glassy surface, divers in bulky drysuits were excavating a prehistoric hunting camp. A deafening motor mounted on the Goor's deck powered a pressure pump, which they were using to suck sediment from the sea bottom into mesh bags....

Excavations of a Mesolithic site on Skye could give new insights into the lives of some of the island's earliest residents. Archaeologists believe the location above Staffin Bay has the remains of a house that could be 8,000 years old. Mesolithic flints have previously been found in an area of eroded grazing land near the site. Archaeologists will work with Staffin Community Trust and volunteers in making small excavations. The University of the Highlands and Islands' Archaeology Institute will lead the investigation. Archaeologist Dan Lee said the dig at the site of "important prehistoric occupation" had "huge potential". Staffin Community...

The site of what is now Rotterdam's Yangtzehaven was inhabited by humans in the Middle Stone Age. At a depth of 20 metres, in the sea bed, unique underwater archaeological investigation found traces of bone, flint and charcoal from around 7000 BC. These finds are the very first scientific proof that humans lived at this spot in the Early and Middle Stone Age. Up to now, very little was known about this period in particular, the Early and Middle Mesolithic, so far to the west of the Netherlands... Some 9000 years ago, the area where the North Sea and the...

Archaeologists believe the remains of burned oak uncovered at the site of the first Sainsbury's in the Highlands to be evidence of an ancient "rest stop". The supermarket and a filling station are being constructed on the outskirts of Nairn, at a cost of about £20m. Headland Archaeologists investigated the site ahead of building work. They radiocarbon-dated the hearth to the Mesolithic period, which started as the last Ice Age ended about 12,000 years ago. ...the archaeologists said the fire appeared to have been made to provide heat and not cooking, because no food waste was found... "The dating of...

An enormous underwater landslide 60,000 years ago produced the longest flow of sand and mud yet found on Earth. The landslide off the coast of north-west Africa dumped 225 billion metric tonnes of sediment into the ocean in a matter of hours or days. The flow travelled 1,500km (932 miles) - the distance from London to Rome - before depositing its sediment. The work, by a British team of researchers has been published in the academic journal Nature. The massive surge put down the same amount of sediment that comes out of all the world's rivers combined over a period...

Just over 8,000 years ago a huge landslide occurred off the coast of Norway, known as the Storegga Slide. The event created a catastrophic tsunami, with waves almost half as high as the Statue of Liberty, that battered Britain and other land masses. And now the most accurate computer model ever made of the tsunami suggests that it wiped out the remaining inhabitants of a set of low-lying landmass known as Doggerland off the coast of the UK. A new model by researchers at Imperial College London has revealed the devastating effects of a tsunami caused by a landslide off...