The Lost World Beneath the North Sea
Doggerland, often referred to as the 'Atlantis of Britain', was a vast area of land that once connected Great Britain to mainland Europe before rising seas swallowed it whole. This now-submerged world was a heartland for Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, a landscape of rivers, marshes, and woodlands that was gradually lost to rising sea levels after the last Ice Age ended. For years, scientists have been piecing together the story of this lost land, and this latest research adds a remarkable new chapter to that story.
- The Prehistoric Survivors of the Doggerland Tsunami Event
- Scientists Find Evidence for the Tsunami that Washed Out Doggerland
Unlocking the Past with Ancient DNA
The research, led by the University of Warwick and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, utilized sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) analysis to reconstruct Doggerland's lost environment. By extracting and analyzing DNA from 252 samples taken from 41 marine cores drilled along the course of a prehistoric river, the team built a detailed picture of the region's ecological history from around 16,000 years ago until the landscape's final submergence. This innovative technique allows scientists to identify the plants and animals that once inhabited an area, even when no physical fossils remain. The study revealed the presence of temperate woodland species including oak, elm, and hazel, which were not previously thought to have grown so far north during the last Ice Age, as well as lime trees appearing some 2,000 years earlier than any mainland British records suggest.
Perhaps most surprising was the detection of DNA from Pterocarya, a walnut relative that was believed to have vanished from north-western Europe around 400,000 years ago. Its presence in the sedaDNA record suggests this tree survived in isolated pockets of suitable habitat far longer than anyone had imagined. Lead author Professor Robin Allaby from the University of Warwick described the findings as unexpected:
"We unexpectedly found trees thousands of years earlier than anyone expected — and evidence that the North Sea fully formed later than previously thought."
- Revisiting The 6000-Year-Old Submerged North Sea Ring of Brodgar
- New Project Will Search for Lost Stone Age Settlements on Sea Floors
Doggerland landscape 18,000, 10,000 and 8,000 years ago. (University of Bradford Submerged Landscape Research Centre & Nigel Dodds)
A Refuge for Life and a New Human Story
The discovery of these early forests has significant implications for our understanding of how life recolonized northern Europe after the glaciers retreated. The presence of these "microrefugia" — small areas where temperate species could survive harsh conditions — helps to explain a long-standing puzzle known as Reid's Paradox, which asks how trees were able to spread so rapidly across the continent once the ice receded. The existence of a wooded environment on Doggerland also suggests it could have supported a diverse range of wildlife, including forest animals such as wild boar, and in turn provided rich ecological resources for early human communities long before the well-documented Maglemosian culture appeared around 10,300 years ago.
Co-author Professor Vincent Gaffney of the University of Bradford reinforced the broader significance of the find: "For many years, Doggerland was often described as a land bridge — only significant as a route for prehistoric settlement of the British Isles. Today, we understand that Doggerland was not only a heartland of early human settlement, but also that the presence of the land mass may have provided a refuge for plants and animals and acted as a fulcrum for how prehistoric communities settled and resettled northern Europe over millennia."
The End of a World
Despite its apparent hospitality, Doggerland's time was limited. The same forces that brought an end to the Ice Age — rising temperatures and melting glaciers — also led to its demise, as sea levels crept ever higher across the low-lying landscape. The final blow may have come from the Storegga Slide, a massive underwater landslide off the coast of Norway around 8,150 years ago that triggered a devastating tsunami, washing over what remained of Doggerland. Yet this new research suggests that some portions of the landscape survived even this cataclysm, persisting as islands until around 7,000 years ago. The story of Doggerland is a powerful reminder of the dramatic environmental changes our planet has undergone, and of the lost worlds that lie hidden beneath the waves, waiting to be rediscovered through science.
Top image: An image showing how Doggerland might have looked before the last ice age. Source: AI generated image
By Gary Manners
References
Allaby, R. G. et al. 2026. Early colonization before inundation consistent with northern glacial refugia in Southern Doggerland revealed by sedimentary ancient DNA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Available at: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2508402123
EurekAlert!. 2026. First evidence that North Sea 'Lost World' had habitable forests during the last ice age. Available at: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1119582
Scott, A. 2026. Ancient DNA Reveals Ice Age Forests Grew on the Lost Doggerland 16,000 Years Ago, Before It Was Swallowed by the North Sea. Discover Magazine. Available at: https://www.discovermagazine.com/ancient-dna-reveals-ice-age-forests-grew-on-the-lost-doggerland-16-000-years-ago-before-it-was-swallowed-by-the-north-sea-48810
University of Warwick. 2026. North Sea 'Lost World' had habitable forests thousands of years earlier than thought. Available at: https://warwick.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/north-sea-lost-world/
