Scientists have discovered huge landforms deep beneath the North Sea that suggest the region was swallowed up by a giant ice sheet midway through the last ice age.. This relief is buried under a thick layer of mud. The study was published in the journal Science Advances, writes Live Science.

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The scientists' images show features on the floor of the North Sea that correspond to the advance and retreat of one huge ice sheet that existed 1 million years ago.. This discovery contradicts theories that smaller ice sheets expanded and contracted repeatedly during that time.. These theories were based on numerous depressions, which were believed to be caused by the movement of glaciers. But it turns out that they arose due to strong ocean currents.

Scientists say they have found strong evidence of one large ice movement during this time period, but locations outside the current study area may still contain evidence of several smaller ice sheets.

Study authors used high-resolution sound wave data to reveal hidden terrain. They weren't looking for anything specific and were surprised when they found evidence of one ice sheet.

Such ice sheets move sediment as they grow and shrink, creating erosional and sedimentary landforms from which scientists can reconstruct a region's glacial past. According to scientists, when ice advances, it creates elongated features that form sedimentary rocks in the direction of ice movement.. As the ice retreats, it creates features that show the clear boundaries of the ice sheet..

Scientists say the huge ice sheet formed during the last ice age, known as the Middle Pleistocene Transition, which lasted from 1.3 million to 700,000 years ago.. The Ice Age itself lasted from 2.6 million to about 11,700 years ago..

It was 1 million years ago that serious climate changes occurred on Earth, and the ice ages themselves lasted longer and large-scale ice movement occurred, and therefore scientists want to find out what happened then.

The new study doesn't yet answer where the ice spread during the mid-Pleistocene transition, but it may help scientists piece together a picture of the conditions that led to global climate change..

The discovered landforms indicate that an ice sheet covered modern Norway and extended towards the British Isles. Some of the traces left by its retreat resemble a series of cracks and were formed when the ice sheet " For thousands of years after the ice sheet retreated, landforms were covered in dirt and hidden.

Study provides clues about how ice sheets grow and break apart during climate change.

As Focus already wrote, Antarctica will certainly change sea levels, but there is a nuance. In a new study, scientists have finally made significant progress in understanding exactly how the Antarctic ice sheet is melting and what consequences it will have for the world..

Focus also wrote that, as physicists have found, traveling in space at the speed of light will have a side effect.