"Ancient buried landscape" off the coast of Scotland

Scientists have found evidence of an "ancient buried landscape" that was once above North Atlantic waters, the temporary result--at least in geographical terms--of thermal turmoil beneath the planet's surface. In "Transient convective uplift of an ancient buried landscape," Ross A. Hartley and his co-authors write that pressure forced parts of the European continental shelf above water in three discrete steps of up to 400m.

Here, we use three-dimensional seismic data to reconstruct one of these ancient landscapes that formed off the northwest coast of Europe during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. We identify a drainage network within the landscape and, by modelling the profiles of individual rivers within this network, we reconstruct the history of surface uplift. We show that the landscape was lifted above sea level in a series of three discrete steps of 200-400 m each. After about 1 million years of subaerial exposure, this landscape was reburied

P.S. This new Atlantis' time in the sun was a good 55m years ago, which means we can just go totally science fiction with it. More details from Annalee Newitz at io9: This lost continent off the coast of Scotland disappeared beneath the ocean 55 million years ago [io9]

• [Anonymous]

  is anyone else wondering where Scotland is in this photograph?

  Confused Aberdonian

  • [Anonymous]

    I wondered the same until I saw that the io9 article shows it’s up near Shetland.

    Maybe we could get Trump to move his golf course plans to there instead?

• [webmonkees]

  I read that as ‘sunken castle’..

  When I first came here, this was all swamp.
  Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them.
  It sank into the swamp.
  So I built a second one.
  That sank into the swamp.
  So I built a third.
  That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp.
  But the fourth one stayed up.

  And that’s what you’re going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.

• [emmdeeaych]

  I guess I could RTFA, but what’s the time frame for each ‘discrete uplift’? 400m of uplift in one shot would be cataclysmic,

  • [Anonymous]

    The take of the order of 100,000 years each, according to the Nature Geoscience article – that’s a massive rate of 4 mm per year. So I don’t think cataclysmic is the right word! ;)

    Geology is slooooow…

• [rhys]

  this is interesting:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJfBSc6e7QQ

  but personally, i’d prefer an infinitely expansive flat earth…

  perhaps we might contemplate we’re currently in quarantine until more of us learn how to think as individuals.

  lost,

  n_n ~!

• [muteboy]

  I had no idea Slaine was that old

• [RebNachum]

  So we’re talking … what? North Atlantis? Hyperborea? The Plateau of Leng? What’s the local-legend skinny?

• [penguinchris]

  Hmm. This is actually quite specifically similar to my own graduate research (still in progress). My elevation data visualization looks the same too (they used the default/standard colors of course.)

  Their explanation, by the way, is total conjecture and to me it sounds like a bit of BS but it is certainly an intriguing idea. My hypothesis (for a similar situation but kind of the opposite effect in northwest Thailand) is directly related to “normal” plate tectonics rather than any bizarre mantle plume ideas.

  Of course, the tectonic history of Scotland is much better understood than that of Thailand so I suppose they’ve eliminated the possibility of normal tectonic stuff.

  Thing is though that determining uplift amounts and rates from this type of data is fraught with difficulties, and in many cases is virtually impossible without more data. I can’t access the full paper but from what I can see their method here is actually quite interesting and not something I’ve seen before, which is saying something considering this is my specific field…

  I suspect their methodologies will survive and help other geologists longer than their mantle plume hypothesis will last :)

• [Umbriel]

  I would think that at least some of that was also exposed by lowered sea levels during more recent ice ages.

  I also think that there might be a lot of early human history, possibly comparatively technically advanced history (advanced as in early agricultural high stone age or bronze age, not as in Atlantian lasers and grav chariots), lying off our current coastlines.

• [pauldrye]

  There’s two other real lost continents too.

  The Kerguelen Plateau was a big subcontinental platform about the size of India, also raised by a mantle plume. It’s still peeking out above the waters in two places, the Kerguelen Islands (hence the name) and the Heard and McDonald Islands in the southern Indian Ocean.

  Every now and then New Zealand also pops its head above the ocean to a much larger extent than it is in the modern day. Zealandia, as it’s called, was about half Australia’s size. Interestingly enough even the bits left over that we see today may have been entirely underwater about 20 million years ago.

• [OldBrownSquirrel]

  Show me an estuary, and I’ll show you a flooded ancient valley.

• [holtt]

  Like Doggerland but a lot older.