The Geological Formation of Britain

Melvyn Bragg and guests Richard Corfield, Jane Francis and Sanjeev Gupta discuss the geological formation of Britain.Around 600 million years ago the island that we now call Britain was in two parts, far to the south of the Equator. Scotland and north-western Ireland were part of a continent (Laurentia) that also included what is now North America. To the south-east, near the Antarctic Circle, meanwhile, you would have found southern Ireland, England and Wales. They formed a mini-continent (Avalonia) with what is now Newfoundland.Over the course of hundreds of millions of years, as they inched their way north, the two parts came together - first as part of a vast unitary continent (Pangaea), later as a promontory on the edge of Europe, and eventually, as sea levels rose, as an island. The story of how Britain came to be where it is now, in its current shape - from the separation of North America and Europe to the carving out of the English Channel - is still being uncovered today.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Richard Corfield 10 episodes
  Visiting Senior Resarch Fellow at Oxford University
• Jane Francis 8 episodes
  Professor of Palaeoclimatology at the University of Leeds
• Sanjeev Gupta No other episodes
  Royal Society-Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow at Imperial College London

Related episodes

• The Nation State
  
  14 Oct, 1999 320 Political science
• Doggerland
  
  27 Jun, 2019 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Celts
  
  21 Feb, 2002 930 History of the Ancient World
• Plate Tectonics
  
  24 Jan, 2008 550 Earth sciences and geology
• The Picts
  
  9 Nov, 2017 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Lindisfarne Gospels
  
  20 Feb, 2003 270 History of Christianity
• The Cambrian Period
  
  17 Feb, 2005 560 Fossils and prehistoric life
• Roman Britain
  
  1 May, 2003 930 History of the Ancient World
• Megaliths
  
  2 Mar, 2023 930 History of the Ancient World
• The KT Boundary
  
  23 Jun, 2005 560 Fossils and prehistoric life

---

Programme ID: b00n8t48

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n8t48

Auto-category: 550 (Earth sciences)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. 600 million years ago Britain was in two parts far to the south of the equator.