IT has all the ingredients of an Indiana Jones adventure: an academic, an old map, and a search for hidden treasure older than the pyramids of Egypt.
This treasure, however, is a forest in Orkney, which was buried beneath rising sea levels 6500 years ago. Alistair Rennie discovered it while doing a PhD looking at the effect of rising sea levels in the area, which he hopes will inform methods of dealing with climate change. His studies, funded jointly by Scottish Natural Heritage and Glasgow University's geography department, took Mr Rennie and his colleagues to Sanday, Orkney, which he described as a "sinking island".
The 27-year-old said: "We looked at a series of beaches there and we came across poems and letters and legends suggesting there was this submerged forest on the other side of the island at Otterswick Bay.

"A man called Dr Triall had written about a woman who walked down to the bay after a storm in 1838. The sand on the beach had been all whipped up and she saw a huge expanse of what looked like black moss where there should only have been more sand. "We also came across an old map. It was produced in 1847 by a Commander Becker and the submerged forest was marked on it.

"He had not seen it himself – it referred to what someone had said they had seen before. It wasn't quite X marks the spot, but it gave us a good idea of where to look."

Mr Rennie then went out in search of the forest and, after researching any possible environmental impacts, decided to use a JCB to dig into the sand on the bay during low tide.

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Without bullwhip and a bomber jacket it isnt Indiana Jone adventure :-D

You're right!

Yeah, Scotland is cool

Cool, thats an amazing discovery, very interesting indeed!