until the current situation
Paleogeographers studying the
Quaternary period have suggested that 600,000 years ago, although the Channel and the
North Sea were flooded, the
Weald-Artois ridge remained as a
land bridge between Britain and
Continental Europe, allowing people, plants and animals to cross. This barrier also separated the
drainage basins of the rivers, with the Rhine and the Thames forced to flow into the North Sea. A bathymetric study of the morphology of the current Channel floor in 2007 found evidence suggesting that the ridge was eroded by two 'megafloods' between 180,000 and 450,000 years ago. During periods of glaciation the British and the
Fennoscandian ice sheets trapped water, preventing it from flowing north, and together with the land bridge to the south formed a glacial lake. The lake grew as the rivers continued to pour into it until it finally breached the southern ridge, creating what the paper called the 'Fleuve Manche', translating to Channel River, flowing through the vast shallow valley of the Channel Basin and into the
Bay of Biscay. This westward-flowing Channel River carried water not only from the rivers that currently enter the Channel (such as the
Seine), but also from those that now drain into the southern
North Sea, among them the
Rhine,
Meuse,
Thames and
Scheldt, making it larger than any river in modern-day Europe. The erosion from two such breaches left a significant gap in the ridge, so when the ice melted and the seas rose, water covered the area, cutting Britain off. Since the last ice age, around 12,000 years ago, the current Channel formed, and the
Strait of Dover is now a wide gap in the ridge, bordered by cliffs of between high on both the
Kent and the
Calais sides. == Studies ==