Weald–Artois Anticline

The Weald -Artois anticline is a ridge of chalk rock, extending from the so-called Weald area in the south of England from Kent to Artois in eastern France and may touch the areas of Dover and Calais. 225,000 years ago, this area was not yet separated by the English Channel.

The word means a geological anticline saddle, which is created by folding and by his bulge open rock layers. Here, the term in the narrower sense limited to those bulges in which the original arrangement of the layer sequence is preserved.

The Weald -Artois anticline arched during the Alpidic orogeny in which it turned out was the current form of the mountains in Europe about 100 to 5 million years. Geologically this orogeny was formed between the Cretaceous and the strongest uplift phase in the late Miocene. The glaciations of the Pleistocene influenced significantly the appearance of today's mountains.

In the northeast of the ridge is an area that was formed by a glacial lake and is below sea level of the North Sea. Against the southwest low-lying areas joined, the sooner England, Scotland and Wales combined with the continent and are now covered by the English Channel.

The first glacier run, which resulted in the separation of England from continental Europe, happened about 425,000 years ago, with a flooding of up to one million cubic meters per second worked out the valley of present-day English Channel from the comb.

The second glacier run, which turned out to probably even more powerful than the first, occurred about 225,000 years ago, severing the UK final of the mainland.

• Geography (France)
• Orogeny
• Geography (England)