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July
19, 2007 A catastrophic
megaflood separated The study, led by
Sanjeev Gupta and Jenny
Collier from Imperial College London, has revealed spectacular images
of a huge
valley tens of kilometers wide and up to 50 meters (164 feet) deep
carved into
chalk bedrock on the floor of the Using
high-resolution sonar waves the team
captured images of a perfectly preserved submerged world in the channel
basin.
The maps highlight deep scour marks and landforms which were created by
torrents of water rushing over the exposed channel basin. To the north of
the channel basin was a lake
which formed in the area now known as the southern It is believed
that a rise in the lake level
eventually led to a breach in the Weald-Artois ridge, carving a massive
valley
along the At its peak, it is
believed that the
megaflood could have lasted several months, discharging an estimated
one
million cubic meters (35 million cubic feet) of water per second. This
flow was
one of the largest recorded megafloods in history and could have
occurred
450,000 to 200,000 years ago. The researchers
believe the breach of the
ridge, and subsequent flooding, reorganized the river drainages in
north-west
Europe by re-routing the combined The breach and
permanent separation of the Dr Sanjeev Gupta,
from the Department of
Earth Science & Engineering at Imperial said: “This
prehistoric event
rewrites the history of how the Project
collaborator, Dr Jenny Collier, also
from the Department of Earth Science & Engineering, speculates
on the
potential for future discoveries on the continental shelves. “The
preservation of the landscape on the
floor of the ##
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