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ICE AGE BRITAIN
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Howard Stableford looks for remnants of the last Ice Age. |
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Britain has been through a number of "Ice Ages" in the last two and a half million years, but is currently in a relatively short "warm period".
Over two programmes, Howard Stableford finds clues that the British Isles were once gripped by an age of ice which ended a mere 10,000 years ago. His search takes him the length and breadth of the country, from the central highlands of Scotland to Jersey.
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Howard Stableford (Right) with Paul Pettitt
digging for clues on Britain's Ice Age |
Programme 1: Evidence In Britain
Britain was once covered by glaciers that were almost 2 kilometers thick. Amazingly, the last glaciers only retreated 8000 years ago from Scotland and today's landscape can tell us about those icy times.
In his search for evidence, Howard finds a huge boulder from the Lake District now sitting in a housing estate in Stoke-on-Trent and visits a house in Amsterdam filled to the roof with mammoth bones trawled from the North Sea.
And in Jersey he discovers a site where Neanderthals hunted woolly rhino and mammoths by herding the animals over high cliffs.
But there are clues that Britain was not always cold - there were warmer interglacial periods, when the hippopotamus was one of the most common animals in England!
 Listen again to Programme 1 |
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Programme 2: Still In The Freezer
Howard discovers what causes ice ages to start and finish and how glaciers can transform a landscape.
But will glaciers ever return to Britain or will global warming permanently disrupt the earth's natural swings from ice age to warm periods?
The latest research suggests that human-induced climate change will be a temporary phenomenon for a couple of centuries that may only delay the next cold phase.
But the big question for us is if humans and wildlife can survive a period of excessive warming.
Listen again to Programme 2 |
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RELATED LINKS |
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BBC Science & Nature: Ice Age Ancestors
BBC Science & Nature: Ice Age Animals
Creswell Crags in Nottinghamshire
Climate Fluctuations, University of Aberystwyth
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