Europe cut adrift

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Europe cut adrift
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The floor of the English Channel provides
evidence for two catastrophic floods arising from
the drainage of huge glacial lakes in the area of
the southern North Sea. These megafloods made
Britain what it is today.
Nature - July 2007
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lake
dam
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Catastrophic flooding origin of shelf valley
systems in the English Channel
lake
dam
Sanjeev Gupta, Jenny S. Collier, Andy
Palmer-Felgate Graeme Potter
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lake
dam
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Sanjeev Gupta, Jenny S. Collier, Andy
Palmer-Felgate Graeme Potter
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From the measurements of channel cross-sections,
we estimate peak discharge of approximately 1
million cubic meters per second or 85 cubic
kilometers per day.
Sanjeev Gupta, Jenny S. Collier, Andy
Palmer-Felgate Graeme Potter
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Science - August 2007
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debris field
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tear-shaped islands
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Conservative calculations suggest 25 cubic
kilometers per day. That magnitude is equivalent
to more than 100 times the present high-flow
discharge over Niagara Falls.
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Smoking gun?

• Top of debris fan dated as older than 7,000
  years.
• Surface that is rest upon dated as younger than
  9,000 years.
• Fan is sampled at two locations and consists of
  gravel and cobbles of rocks similar to the
  bedrock of the Bosporus Strait.

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