Europe from the last Ice Age to today
Ice sheets, sea level and coastlines over the last 26,000 years, in 45 seconds.
What you are seeing
At the start global sea level stood about 120 m lower than today (Spratt & Lisiecki sea-level stack: 122.4 ± 5.2 m lower, 1σ). Ice sheets covered Scandinavia, the Baltic and much of the British Isles, and Britain was joined to the continent.
As the ice melts, the land it pressed down rises and the sea returns. In this model the Strait of Dover floods first, between 11,500 and 10,000 years ago, and the last land link between Britain and the continent, across Doggerland in the southern North Sea, breaks between 9,500 and 9,000 years ago.
Published reconstructions disagree on where that last link was, across the southern North Sea or at the Strait of Dover, and place its loss between 9,250 and 7,500 years ago. The most detailed recent one (Hoebe et al. 2024) prefers the older end and, like this model, puts the last link across the southern North Sea.
Blue lines on land are palaeo-rivers and lakes from published maps and from this project's own terrain analysis; a channel is hidden once the sea has flooded it.
How it was made
Modern bare-earth elevation and bathymetry are shifted epoch by epoch with a glacial isostatic adjustment model, flooded to that epoch's sea surface and overlaid with the modelled ice extent. Every frame is rendered by the Paleo-Europe viewer.
Limits of the model
- No sedimentation or erosion: coasts that grew or wore away since the Ice Age are drawn at today's shape, and sea-floor sediment laid down later is treated as part of the old land surface.
- The terrain is modelled at fixed time steps and blended in between, so short, sharp jumps in sea level are smoothed out.
- The ice outline comes from a coarse global ice model and is smoothed for display, so local ice margins are approximate.
- Vegetation is not shown: the vegetation model we tested disagrees with published reconstructions of the glacial landscape, so it is left out.
- Palaeo-rivers are drawn only where a published map or a computed reconstruction exists; blank land does not mean there was no river.
- The island date is the model's, not a measurement; see the literature range above.
The interactive viewer is in private preview.
Video licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, because it is derived from FABDEM. Share it with a link to this page; no commercial use.
Sources
- Land elevation: FABDEM V1-2 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) — Hawker et al. 2022, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac4d4f
- Bathymetry: GEBCO_2024 Grid — GEBCO Bathymetric Compilation Group 2024, doi:10.5285/1c44ce99-0a0d-5f4f-e063-7086abc0ea0f
- Land fill where FABDEM has no data (Armenia, Azerbaijan and the adjoining area): Copernicus DEM GLO-90, doi:10.5270/ESA-c5d3d65; produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-90 © DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved
- Ice extent and glacial isostatic adjustment: ICE-6G_C (VM5a) — Peltier, Argus & Drummond 2015, doi:10.1002/2014JB011176
- Global sea level: Spratt & Lisiecki 2016, doi:10.5194/cp-12-1079-2016 (data doi:10.25921/rd66-5820)
- Loss of the Britain–continent land link: Hoebe et al. 2024, doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2024.05.006; Sturt, Garrow & Bradley 2013, doi:10.1016/j.jas.2013.05.023; Weninger et al. 2008, doi:10.4312/dp.35.1
Palaeo-rivers and lakes
- Shelf palaeo-channels: EMODnet Geology, Submerged Landscapes, compiled from national geological surveys and research institutes; the southern North Sea channels via ABPmer (2009) after Gaffney et al. 2007, Mapping Doggerland, doi:10.2307/j.ctv1pzk1w9
- Last Glacial Maximum river network, traced automatically by this project from the published map (positional accuracy about 3–6 km): Becker, Verheul, Zickel & Willmes 2015, LGM paleoenvironment of Europe, CRC806 database, doi:10.5880/SFB806.15
- Lakes and drainage from the ZBSA (Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology) EPHA time-slice maps
- Rhine-Meuse delta: Vos & de Vries 2021, Palaeogeographic maps of the Netherlands (RCE / TNO / Deltares); Vos, van der Meulen, Weerts & Bazelmans 2020, Atlas of the Holocene Netherlands
- Polish ice-marginal valleys: Geological Map of Poland 1:500 000 (Marks, Ber, Gogołek & Piotrowska 2006, PIG-PIB), dated after Marks et al. 2016, doi:10.1515/agp-2016-0018; Weckwerth 2018, doi:10.1007/s00531-017-1545-y; Wierzbicki et al. 2020, doi:10.3390/geosciences10090363
- Traced by this project from figures in published studies: Constantinescu et al. 2015, doi:10.1016/j.margeo.2015.05.007; Maselli & Trincardi 2013, doi:10.1038/srep01926; Kiss et al. 2015, doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2014.05.050; Lericolais et al. 2009, doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2008.03.010; Popescu et al. 2004, doi:10.1016/j.margeo.2004.03.003; Berné et al. 2007, doi:10.1016/j.margeo.2007.07.006; Chaumillon et al. 2008, doi:10.1016/j.jmarsys.2007.05.014; Demurtas et al. 2022, doi:10.3390/geosciences12090342; Giosan et al. 2012, doi:10.1038/srep00582; Schellmann 2010, Bamberger Geographische Schriften; Bennike, Nørgaard-Pedersen & Jensen 2019, doi:10.34194/GEUSB-201943-01-06; Nienhuis et al. 2017, doi:10.5194/esurf-5-585-2017; Vella et al. 2005, doi:10.1016/j.margeo.2005.06.028; Lüthgens & Böse 2011, doi:10.3285/eg.60.2-3.02; Kharlanova et al. 2025, doi:10.1017/qua.2025.10031; Lobacheva, Badyukova & Makshaev 2023, doi:10.1134/S2079096123030071; Papenmeier & Hass 2020, doi:10.3390/geosciences10120505; Zelčs & Nartišs 2014, INQUA Peribaltic excursion guide; Fanget et al. 2016, doi:10.5194/cp-12-2161-2016; Figge 1980, doi:10.3285/eg.30.1.16; Rychagov, Korotaev & Chernov 2010, doi:10.24057/2071-9388-2010-3-1-4-15; Somoza et al. 1998, doi:10.1016/S0037-0738(97)00121-8
- Lakes and spillways computed by this project from the elevation model and checked against regional literature, e.g. Bobrov et al. 2024, doi:10.31951/2658-3518-2024-A-4-244