A vast prehistoric landscape now hidden beneath the North Sea may have supported forests and wildlife thousands of years earlier than scientists previously believed.
New research suggests that Doggerland, a landmass that once connected Britain to mainland Europe, may have been a hospitable environment for plants, animals, and potentially early human communities well before forests spread widely across Britain and northern Europe.
The study, led by researchers at the University of Warwick and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), used sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) to reconstruct Doggerland’s environment in unprecedented detail.
By analysing genetic traces preserved in marine sediments, scientists were able to identify plant species that lived there from the end of the last Ice Age until rising seas eventually submerged the landscape.
The findings reveal that temperate woodland species such as oak, elm, and hazel were already present in southern Doggerland more than 16,000 years ago — several thousand years earlier than indicated by pollen records from mainland Britain. Researchers also detected DNA from lime (Tilia), a warmth-loving tree species, appearing around 2,000 years earlier than previously recorded in Britain.
Perhaps most surprising was the discovery of genetic traces belonging to Pterocarya, a walnut-related tree thought to have vanished from north-western Europe roughly 400,000 years ago. The presence of this species suggests it may have survived in the region far longer than scientists had assumed.
To uncover these insights, researchers analysed 252 sediment samples taken from 41 marine cores along a prehistoric river system known as the Southern River. The sediments, which accumulated over thousands of years, preserved fragments of ancient DNA that allowed scientists to reconstruct the ecological history of Doggerland from roughly 16,000 years ago until its final submergence beneath the North Sea.
Professor Robin Allaby at the School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick and lead author of this study says: “By analysing sedaDNA from Southern Doggerland at a scale not seen before, we have reconstructed the environment of this lost land from the end of the last Ice Age until the North Sea arrived. We unexpectedly found trees thousands of years earlier than anyone expected — and evidence that the North Sea fully formed later than previously thought.
“From a human perspective, this is the best evidence that Doggerland’s wooded environment could have supported early Mesolithic communities prior to flooding and may help explain why relatively little early Mesolithic evidence survives on mainland Britain today.”
The research also challenges earlier assumptions about when Doggerland disappeared.
Evidence from the DNA record suggests parts of the landscape remained above water even after major flooding events, including the Storegga tsunami around 8,150 years ago. Some areas may have survived as dry land until as recently as 7,000 years ago.
The study supports growing evidence that small-scale “microrefugia” allowed temperate plant species to survive northern Europe’s Ice Age conditions, helping explain Reid’s Paradox — how trees recolonised the region so rapidly after the last Ice Age retreated.
The presence of woodland habitats so early in Doggerland’s history also raises new questions about the region’s importance for prehistoric humans. Forest ecosystems could have supported animals such as wild boar and other game, potentially providing rich resources for early Mesolithic communities long before the better-known Maglemosian culture emerged around 10,300 years ago.
Co-author, Professor Vincent Gaffney at University of Bradford says, “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.”
As scientists continue to investigate the North Sea’s submerged landscapes, Doggerland is increasingly emerging not as a simple migration route, but as a thriving ecosystem that played a crucial role in the environmental and human history of Ice Age Europe.
Header Image Credit : University of Bradford Submerged Landscape & Research Centre
Sources : University of Warwick – https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2508402123
