Page:Submerged forests (1913).djvu/53

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IV]
THE DOGGER BANK
39

is no local phenomenon, but a widespread movement of depression which must greatly have altered the physical geography of north-western Europe during times within the memory of man. This evidence deserves a separate chapter.

CHAPTER IV

THE DOGGER BANK

For the last 50 years it has been known to geologists that the bed of the North Sea yields numerous bones of large land animals, belonging in great part to extinct species. These were first obtained by oyster-dredgers, and later by trawlers. Fortunately a good collection of them was secured by the British Museum, where it has been carefully studied by William Davies, The bones came from two localities. One of them, close to the Norfolk coast off Happisburgh, yielded mainly teeth of Elephas meridionalis, and its fossils were evidently derived from the Pliocene Cromer Forest bed, which in that neighbourhood is rapidly being destroyed by the sea. This need not now detain us.

The other locality is far more extraordinary. In the middle of the North Sea lies the extensive shoal known as the Dogger Bank, about 60 or 70 miles