Kind: captions
Language: en
the English Channel it links the North
Sea in the East to the Atlantic Ocean in
the West it's the busiest shipping lane
in the
and towering more than 350 feet above it
on the south coast of England are the
White Cliffs of Dover geologists like
James Lawrence now think these iconic
chalk cliffs hold an extraordinary
secret people don't realize that if I
was to go over to France we could find
similar chocolate we are getting exactly
the same rocks which have been deposited
in exactly the same environment on this
side of the channel and on the French
side of the channel and James is
discovering that the connection between
the cliffs in France and England goes
beyond the chalk itself embedded in the
white chalk are a series of horizontal
bands of a dark rock called Flint here I
have a fantastic band of Flint Flint a
form of the mineral quartz is formed by
changes in ocean chemistry but these
changes occur only occasionally
resulting in these distinctive dark
bands these Flint bands are continuous
throughout the chalk
this band of flint runs through the
entire cliff and there are dozens
running horizontally taken together
these parallel bands of dark Flint form
a unique geological fingerprint in the
white cliff what's extraordinary is that
the same geological fingerprint is
visible on the other side of the channel
so the chalk and the Flint in these
cliffs forms a barcode in is exactly the
same as the chalk and the Flint in the
cliffs in France the spacing and levels
of the Flint layers perfectly align so
what we know from this evidence is that
a chalk bridge once connected England
and France
these Flint layers tell us that hundreds
of thousands of years ago a ridge of
chalk almost seven miles wide once
extended 21 miles across the channel
joining what is now Britain to the
European continent but this discovery
raises a brand new mystery somehow the
cliffs between England and France have
been separated over time if Britain and
France were once joined what force
separated them and turned Britain into
an idol
[Music]
you