March 2011.
It is some time since I added an Update to this site but a very interesting
possibility has emerged. This is due to work produced at Birmingham University
on the Southern North Sea with access to extensive seismic surveys prepared for
the petroleum industry. Two reports have been published so far, “Europe’s Lost
World, The rediscovery of Doggerland” Research Report No 160 for the Council for
British Archeology 2009, and “Mapping Doggerland, the Mesolithic Landscapes of
the Southern North Sea”, published by Archeopress, 2007. This work is of
considerable importance to the understanding of what lies below the Southern
North Sea, and one hopes that it will continue.
My interest was taken by page 43 of ‘Mapping Doggerland” which contains a very
clear contoured map including the Outer Silver Pit which is a sunken feature
outlined by geological faults just under 100 km long and mainly about 12 km
wide, some 50 km to the East of Scarborough. The feature occurs at a depth of
about 40 meters and the current fault depth around the feature is a further 40
meters. The first thing that I noted, on the same page, was that there is
apparently no agreed explanation for this feature. Proposals have been put
forward involving glaciations, drainage during glaciations, and strong tidal
currents. For over half its length this feature runs in a straight line
West-East and I began to wonder about the possibility of it being a large meteor
crater. I began to search on the net for models of meteor craters but they all
seemed to be round, and thus associated with a more or less vertical approach,
but here the meteor would have made a low angle approach and the crater would
have been subject to considerable tidal deformation later on, particularly at
the West end where it lurches somewhat northwards. So far the meteor crater idea
is not impossible, but more evidence is required.
I then started looking at some smaller similar features distributed to the South
of the Outer Silver Pit varying from 10 – 20km long and 1 and 2 km wide. Two of
them are called just Silver Pit, one is called Well Hole, and another Markham’s
Hole. The fascinating thing is that if one aligns these features towards the
Outer Silver Pit the arrival points are very close together. The distance from
each pit to this arrival point varies between 40 – 50 km. The arrival point is
to the West end of the Outer Silver Pit, just as it starts to turn towards the
North.
This suggests the possibility that as the meteor, travelling East, first hit the
ground, the impact led to some fracturing and smaller fragments broke off and
landed separately. It is difficult to visualize any other explanation for the
very particular arrangement of these smaller features. However this makes the
low angle meteor crater a very serious possibility, but one requiring core
analysis to test it properly.
The effect of a large meteor on a wide area surrounding the crater would be
dire. All life would be extinguished by calcination.
For the history of the land below the Southern North Sea the story changes
completely.
If it could be shown that the meteor did arrive, then the date of that event
becomes extremely important. This date will also determine the level of the sea,
which in turn will define the amount of land still surviving at that time in the
North Sea. The event will also have been of considerable importance to the many
people living in lands surrounding the North Sea who we now know quite a lot
about. Can we detect any reactions by these people to the event?