Ancient DNA recovered from the floor of the North Sea shows that the lost land of Doggerland was covered in temperate forests and supported large land mammals during the Ice Age, long before it disappeared beneath rising seas. The work, led by researchers at the University of Warwick, reconstructs Southern Doggerland’s ecology from around 16,000 years ago through its final inundation. The findings challenge long‑held views of a bleak, frozen plain and instead indicate a rich habitat that would have been attractive to prehistoric hunter‑gatherers.
The latest publicly available data come from peer‑reviewed studies that combine sedimentary ancient DNA, pollen and other microfossils to piece together this submerged world. Together, they suggest that Doggerland functioned as a Mesolithic refuge where forests, mammals and people coexisted until the North Sea claimed the land.
Reconstructing a drowned world with ancient DNA
The core evidence comes from a peer‑reviewed study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, led by Rebecca G. Barclay, which uses sedimentary ancient DNA to rebuild the ecology of Southern Doggerland from about 16,000 years ago until it was flooded, according to PNAS. The researchers extracted genetic material from seafloor sediments, a method that allows them to detect traces of plants and animals that once lived on the now‑submerged land.
The University of Warwick reports that the team analysed 252 samples from 41 marine cores taken from the southern North Sea, giving an unusually detailed view across space and time, according to its press release. Each core represents a vertical slice through Doggerland’s history, and the DNA signals at different depths record shifts in vegetation and fauna as the climate warmed and sea levels rose.
This genetic approach is particularly powerful in places like Doggerland, where direct archaeological evidence is hard to recover. By reading DNA preserved in mud, the researchers can identify species even when no bones, seeds or visible fossils remain.
Forests where tundra was expected
One of the most striking results is the presence of temperate trees far earlier than many scientists had assumed. The Warwick team reports DNA from oak, elm and hazel in Southern Doggerland more than 16,000 years ago, according to the same University release. That timing pushes back the arrival of forest conditions into the Late Pleistocene rather than the later Holocene.
The PNAS article describes Southern Doggerland as part of a Mesolithic landscape that became colonized by forests and people during this interval, according to material linked from PNAS. That interpretation rests on the broader climatic context, with the Late Pleistocene spanning approximately 129 to 11.7 ka, according to the same source, and warming conditions allowing woodland to expand northward.
The sedaDNA record even includes Pterocarya DNA in Southern Doggerland, according to the Warwick press office. Pterocarya is a genus associated with temperate, moisture‑loving trees, and its presence supports the view of a relatively mild, wooded environment rather than open steppe.
Signals of large mammals on the Ice Age plain
Alongside the plant record, the PNAS study reports DNA from terrestrial mammals in Southern Doggerland, indicating that sizeable land animals inhabited the area before inundation, according to the journal article. The sedaDNA method does not easily yield precise counts or full species lists, but the presence of mammal genetic material shows that the forests were not empty.
For archaeologists, that combination of woodland and mammals suggests a resource‑rich setting for Ice Age and early Holocene hunter‑gatherers. The PNAS analysis frames Doggerland as a Mesolithic landscape where forests and people occupied the same terrain during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene, according to the linked PNAS section. That view challenges older models that treated the North Sea basin mainly as a cold corridor rather than a long‑term home.
How the DNA evidence is checked
Ancient DNA can be damaged and vulnerable to contamination, so researchers rely on multiple checks before drawing conclusions. A peer‑reviewed study in Geosciences describes how scientists studying the Storegga tsunami in the southern North Sea used several proxies, including microfossils, pollen, diatoms, molluscs and sedimentary DNA, to characterise a major inundation event, according to Geosciences. That study details authentication steps such as examining cytosine deamination and fragmentation patterns, along with metagenomic damage profiles, to confirm that the DNA is genuinely ancient.
The same multi‑proxy logic applies to the Doggerland forest work. By cross‑checking sedaDNA signals against pollen and other microfossils, researchers can reduce the risk that a single contaminated layer or modern intrusion misleads the reconstruction. The approach also helps separate local vegetation from material transported by currents or storms.
Independent checks from pollen records
Long before ancient DNA was applied to Doggerland, palynologists used pollen trapped in sediments to infer past vegetation. A peer‑reviewed reconstruction in E&G Quaternary Science Journal examines Doggerland and wider North Sea Basin environments using pollen and related proxies, according to that journal. The study focuses on the habitats of prehistoric hunter‑gatherer societies and provides a non‑DNA baseline for how forests and wetlands expanded as the climate warmed.
According to the same palynological work, this baseline helps explain the range of environments available to early people, from wooded uplands to low‑lying wetlands. When set alongside the sedaDNA signals for oak, elm, hazel and Pterocarya, the pollen data support the idea that Southern Doggerland shifted from open Late Pleistocene conditions toward more closed forest earlier than some models predicted.
Surviving the Storegga tsunami
The new Doggerland DNA evidence does not stand alone. Earlier research by Warwick scientists examined sedimentary DNA from southern North Sea deposits to study the impact of the Storegga tsunami on early Holocene landscapes, according to a press account of that work on ScienceDaily. That study, which the coverage describes as peer‑reviewed, ties the tsunami to a major marine inundation event in the southern North Sea.
A separate multi‑proxy core investigation confirms that this inundation is the Storegga tsunami and traces how it affected coastal and low‑lying areas, according to the Geosciences article on the southern North Sea. The University of Warwick press office reports that the newer Doggerland sedaDNA study finds evidence that parts of Southern Doggerland’s ecosystems survived through the Storegga tsunami, according to its account. That survival suggests that even dramatic events did not instantly erase forests and mammals from the region.
The Warwick communications team has described this line of research as a breakthrough in studying ancient DNA from Doggerland and its separation from Europe, linking it to work on Storegga and early Holocene change, according to an institutional summary on warwick.ac.uk. Together, these studies frame Doggerland not as a single catastrophe story but as a long, uneven process of environmental change.
What it means for human prehistory
The combined picture has direct implications for how archaeologists think about human movement between what is now Britain and continental Europe. The PNAS study describes Doggerland as a Mesolithic landscape that was colonized by forests and people during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene, according to the linked PNAS material. If temperate woodland and large mammals were established by around 16,000 years ago, then the region would have offered food, fuel and shelter for hunter‑gatherer groups long before final inundation.
The palynological reconstruction of prehistoric environments in the North Sea Basin indicates that these habitats supported hunter‑gatherer societies across a broad area, according to E&G Quaternary Science Journal. That context supports the idea that Doggerland functioned as more than a migration bridge. It likely served as a lived‑in region where groups could stay for extended periods, interact and adapt to changing coastlines.
Some earlier narratives treated the Storegga tsunami as a sudden end point for Doggerland. The Geosciences study that characterises Storegga’s impact, combined with the Warwick DNA evidence for ecological survival, instead points to a more gradual retreat of habitable land, according to that research and the Warwick press office. That shift in emphasis matters because it affects how long people could have used the remaining high ground and forests as sea levels rose.
Why the “lost world” matters now
The latest Doggerland work builds on years of institutional investment in ancient DNA and North Sea research at the University of Warwick, according to information on its main site. By combining sedaDNA, pollen and microfossils, scientists are turning a once speculative map of a drowned land into a detailed ecological record.
These reconstructions do more than satisfy curiosity about a vanished region. They show how quickly environments at high latitudes can shift from icy plains to forests, and how long people and wildlife can cling on as seas advance. As modern coasts face rising water, the story of Doggerland’s forests and mammals offers a deep‑time case study of adaptation, resilience and eventual loss, built from genetic traces left in the mud of the North Sea.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
