Archaeology & History

Region now lost to the sea was once home to forests thriving with wildlife

By T.K. Randall
March 17, 2026 ·  7 comments

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Known as Doggerland, this vast prehistoric landscape once stretched across what is now the North Sea - a sprawling expanse of land inhabited by mammoths and other ancient beasts.

Doggerland wasn't just an expanse of open plains, either - it even had its own forests which were home to wild boar, deer, bears and aurochs.

At the end of the last ice age, as glaciers retreated and sea levels rose, the land was slowly swallowed by the encroaching waters.

What remained fragmented into a chain of islands, before vanishing entirely beneath the waves.Much of what we know about Doggerland comes from fossils and sediment samples retrieved from the sea floor, offering scientists a glimpse of what this long-lost region must have been like.

The most recent research, which looked at DNA samples retrieved from the sediment, showed that Doggerland's forest environments may have been present as recently as 16,000 years ago and that it wasn't inundated with water until around 6,000 years ago, which is around 1,000 years later than previous research had suggested.

During their study, scientists discovered evidence of trees that tend to favor warmer climates, suggesting that Doggerland saw quite mild conditions at the time.

Clearly, there was a lot more to this long-lost region than anyone had realized.

Source: Live Science | Comments (7)

Tags: Ice Age, Doggerland