A RESEARCH student from the North-East has captured the attention of scientists around the world after publishing a paper which stands the history of the world on its head.

A paper by Durham University PhD student Sophie Bassett, published today in the journal Science, has shed new light on the end of the last Ice Age.

Until now, it had been thought that the Earth emerged from deep freeze when the melting of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheet led to rising sea levels, which in turn triggered the Antarctic ice sheet to melt.

However, by feeding sea-level data into a sophisticated computer model, Ms Bassett and colleagues around the world have calculated that Antarctica may have thawed first, causing a chain of events which caused the ice sheets in the North to melt.

Ms Bassett, who is studying with Dr Glenn Milne at the university's earth sciences department, worked in collaboration with scientists from the University of Toronto and Oregon State University.

The Newcastle-born student has now secured funding to continue her research at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar Research, in Germany.

She said: "This has been a fascinating project to be involved in and I am delighted that my work has been so well received."