At the end of the last glacial period, around 10,000 years ago, rising sea levels finally severed the last land connection. A land connection across the southern North Sea existed intermittently at later times when periods of glaciation resulted in lower sea levels. The land masses remained connected until between 450,000 and 180,000 years ago when at least two catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods breached the anticline and destroyed the ridge that connected Britain to Europe. Until the end of the last glacial period, the British Isles were part of continental Europe, linked by the unbroken Weald-Artois Anticline, a ridge that acted as a natural dam to hold back a large freshwater pro-glacial lake, now submerged under the North Sea. Due to the Alpine orogeny, a major mountain building event during the Cenozoic, the sea-floor deposits were raised above sea level.
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