Buried beneath the North Sea, scientists discover hidden prehistoric forest in Doggerland

Top Summary

• What happened: Scientists found evidence of a prehistoric forest buried beneath the North Sea, showing trees in Doggerland existed over 16,000 years ago.
• Why it matters now: The finding pushes back the forest timeline by thousands of years and challenges long-held assumptions about post-Ice Age northern Europe.
• What changes for people: It reshapes understanding of early human migration, climate recovery, and lost landscapes in prehistoric Europe.
• Who is affected: Archaeologists, climate historians, paleoecologists, and anyone studying Europe’s earliest human settlements.

Doggerland was once a vast stretch of land linking what is now Britain with continental Europe, before sea-level rise after the last Ice Age gradually submerged it beneath the North Sea. For decades, researchers largely treated it as a temporary migration route for hunter-gatherer groups moving across northern Europe. But this new study paints a much more complex picture — one of a stable, productive environment that may have supported both dense woodland and human communities over thousands of years.

The study was led by researchers from the University of Warwick and published in PNAS. Instead of relying mainly on traditional pollen analysis, the team used sedimentary ancient DNA, a technique that can identify traces of plants and animals preserved in ancient sediments with far greater detail. Scientists examined 252 samples from 41 marine sediment cores, allowing them to reconstruct the ecological history of southern Doggerland from the end of the Ice Age until the land finally vanished beneath the sea.

One of the most striking discoveries was that oak, elm, and hazel appeared in sediments dating back more than 16,000 years. That is several thousand years earlier than previous estimates for when forests returned to northern Europe after glacial retreat. In other words, Doggerland may have become wooded much sooner than scientists had assumed, suggesting the region recovered ecologically faster — and perhaps more unevenly — after the Ice Age than older models indicated.

Researchers say this earlier forest growth may help solve a long-standing scientific puzzle known as Reid’s Paradox — the question of how forests seemed to spread across Europe after the Ice Age faster than tree migration rates should have allowed. The answer may lie in what scientists call microrefugia: small pockets of land with favorable local conditions where certain species survived harsh climates long after they vanished elsewhere. If Doggerland acted as one of these refuges, it could explain why forests expanded so rapidly once the climate improved.

Another surprising finding involved Pterocarya, a tree genus believed to have disappeared from the region around 400,000 years ago. Yet its DNA turned up in the North Sea sediment samples, suggesting the species may have survived in isolated areas far longer than previously thought. The researchers also found evidence of Tilia (lime trees) appearing around 2,000 years earlier than expected in mainland Britain. Together, those findings strengthen the case that parts of Doggerland maintained milder, more stable local environments even during periods that were generally considered climatically harsh.

That matters not just for plant history, but for human history too. A wooded Doggerland would have been far more than a bare tundra crossing. Forests would have supported animals such as wild boar, along with diverse plant life and freshwater resources, creating an environment suitable for early Mesolithic communities. If those communities did settle there, it may also help explain why archaeologists find relatively little early Mesolithic evidence on mainland Britain — some of the most important sites may now be buried beneath the North Sea.

The study also challenges assumptions about when Doggerland finally disappeared. Some earlier interpretations suggested that marine flooding and catastrophic events such as the Storegga tsunami around 8,150 years ago may have effectively erased the landscape earlier. But the new DNA evidence indicates that parts of Doggerland may have remained above water longer, possibly surviving until around 7,000 years ago. That would mean some communities or ecosystems could have persisted for centuries after events previously thought to have ended the story.

This is why the discovery is so important: it shifts Doggerland from being a lost “bridge” to being a lost world. It was likely a biologically rich and environmentally varied landscape, where climate, ecology, and human migration interacted in ways that are only now coming into focus. And because the evidence comes from ancient DNA preserved under the seabed, researchers now have a powerful new tool to reconstruct landscapes that vanished thousands of years ago.

The broader scientific impact could be substantial. The same sedaDNA techniques used in this study may now be applied to other submerged landscapes around the world, potentially revealing hidden ecosystems, lost migration routes, and forgotten climate refuges beneath modern coastlines. For Europe in particular, Doggerland may prove to be one of the most important missing pieces in understanding how life — both human and ecological — rebounded after the last Ice Age.

Bottom line

Scientists have uncovered compelling evidence that Doggerland hosted forests far earlier than expected, transforming the lost North Sea landscape from a simple migration corridor into a rich prehistoric ecosystem that may have supported early humans and rare tree species for thousands of years before finally disappearing beneath rising seas.

What to watch next

Watch for follow-up studies using ancient seabed DNA to pinpoint exactly when different parts of Doggerland flooded, whether more evidence of human settlement can be identified beneath the North Sea, and whether similar hidden post-Ice Age ecosystems can be found in other submerged regions.