Rearranging Scotland’s coastline (Image: Peter Lewis/bluegreenpictures.com/Rex Feature)
SCOTLAND’S coastline may seem tranquil today, but 55 million years ago it was anything but. Hot rock flowing beneath the Earth’s crust caused the region to rise and fall by hundreds of metres. Similar activity could be responsible for dramatic changes in sea level elsewhere in the world.
Global sea levels can change by more than 100 metres in only tens of thousands of years as land ice accumulates or melts. Now Bryan Lovell of the University of Cambridge and colleagues say that evidence from Scotland shows that changes in the Earth’s…
