fleuve manche

Brits might scoff at the suggestion they're from the same continent as their mainland European neighbours. But a new report claims the two masses are linked by a low-lying range of hills that flooded over thousands of years, leaving the English Channel that separates England and France today.

Thousands of layers of sheet (ice)

An Anglo-French study (would you believe it) has revealed that the hilly range ran between Kent and Artois, in northern France, some half a million years ago. Yet ice ages beginning 450,000 years ago coated northern Europe in thick layers of ice, trapping water in a giant lake between Kent and France's Artois region.