Time to defend the realm against the White Walkers!
The giant ice sheet that covered the Scottish landscape during the last ice age has been visualized in a new stunning video and it looks just like the Wall from Game of Thrones. (Should we be concerned about finding white walkers next?!)
The video is a joint venture by Kieran Duncan, a lecturer in communication design at the University of Dundee in Scotland, and Max Van Wyk de Vries, a glaciologist at the University of Minnesota. The film recreates the 1km thick glacier and how it would have looked on top of the modern-day city of Dundee.
In the video, the 571 foot tall Dundee Law Hill which is a famous landmark of the city can also be seen to compare the size of the glacier with the tallest landmark and see the immense difference between the two. “Part of the film shows what a 1 km ice sheet would have looked like on top of the [Dundee] Law, and I remember my mind being blown when Max first told me about that,” Duncan said in a statement.
Some 20,000 years ago, glaciers were a common sight and covered most of Dundee and the British Isles. As the Earth began to warm up, the glaciers melted and carved different structures out of which Dundee Law is one of them. Duncan initially compared the size of the Dundee Law with the original glacier and was left awestruck when he realized how massive the latter was.
Meanwhile, Vries became interested in Scotland’s past when he was stuck in Dundee due to the COVID-19 lockdown and began scanning different scientific papers and ice models to study more about the glaciers. He was then able to receive public funding from the British Society for Geomorphology and teamed up with Duncan to create the 3-minute animated film.