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Lake Zaysan in Kazakhstan is one of the oldest lakes in the world.

An ancient lake is a lake that has consistently carried water for more than one million years. 12 of the 20 ancient lakes have existed for more than 2.6 million years, the full Quaternary period. Ancient lakes continue to persist due to plate tectonics in an active rift zone. This active rift zone creates lakes that are extremely deep and difficult to naturally fill with sediment. Due to the prolonged life of ancient lakes, they serve as models for isolated evolutionary traits and speciation. Most of the world's bodies of water are less than 18,000 years old. There are only 20 ancient lakes over 1 million years old.^[1]

Lake Baikal is often considered the oldest, as clear evidence shows that it is 25–30 million years old.^[2]^[3] Lake Zaysan may be even older, of Cretaceous origin and at least 66 million years old^[4] (most likely around 70 million years^[5]), but its exact age is controversial and labeled with some uncertainty.^[6] Another contender for oldest is Lake Maracaibo, estimated to be 20–36 million years old. In ancient times it was indisputably a true lake, but today it is saline and directly connected to the sea, leading many to consider it a large lagoon or bay.^[7]

Ancient lakes vs. younger lakes

There are six major types of lakes (listed below). The majority of lakes dry up as the result of the filling with lacustrine deposits, sediment deposited from a river into a lake over thousands of years. Factors that influence the water level decreasing include fluvial-lacustrine sediment build-up, evaporation, natural drainage, and geophysical processes. Ancient lakes have a prolonged life when compared to younger, more ordinary lakes due to the local active rift zones and subsided sections of land called grabens.

For example, Lake Baikal in Russia, the deepest lake in the world, is an ancient lake created by the Baikal Rift Zone which is 25–30 million years old and 5,387 feet (1,642 m) deep. This is compared to the North American Great Lakes, which were formed by the last glacial period by glacial scouring and the pooling of meltwater which are 14,000 years old and have maximum depths ranging from 200–1,300 feet (60–400 m) deep.

Formation of ancient lakes

Ancient lake formation is similar to that of a rift valley. Formation occurs within a graben that is located on an active rift zone. Grabens are sections of land, formed along divergent plate boundaries, which have subsided between two parallel plates. The location of the graben above the active rift zone results in a lake bottom that is constantly dropping in-depth and walls increasing in height.

Importance to evolution

Ancient lakes allow scientists to study the mechanisms of environmental changes over glacial-interglacial timescales. Evolutionary characteristics including sexual selection, adaptive radiation and punctuated equilibrium are studied in ancient lakes due to their prolonged existence and general geographic isolation. Most of the research has been associated with the endemic fauna and diatoms that exist in these isolated lakes, concentrating on Lake Baikal, the Caspian Sea and the African Great Lakes. Information is derived from the associations of the fluvial-lacustrine, fluctuating profundal and evaporative facies.

List of ancient lakes

These are the 20 ancient lakes in the world that have existed for more than 1 million years.^[1]


Name	Origin	Type	Age	Area (km²)	Volume (km³)	Depth max	Depth average	Countries	Notes
Lake Pingualuk	meteor impact	fresh, permanent, crater	1.5 million	8		267		Canada
Lake Tahoe	tectonic	fresh, permanent	1–2 million	499	156	505	313	United States
Lake Bosumtwi	meteor impact	soda, permanent, crater	1–2 million	49	2.24	81	45	Ghana
Lake Lanao	volcanic	fresh, permanent	2 million	375		112	60.3	Philippines
Lake Titicaca	tectonic	fresh, permanent	3 million	8372	893	281	107	Bolivia, Peru
Lake Prespa	tectonic	fresh, permanent	1.5-5 million	259	4.8	54	18.7	Albania, Greece, North Macedonia
Lake Ohrid	tectonic	fresh, permanent	1.5-5 million	358.18	53.63	286.7	163.71	Albania North Macedonia
Lake Malawi	tectonic	fresh, permanent	2–5 million	29600	8400	705	292	Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania
Lake Hovsgol	tectonic	fresh, permanent	2–5 million	2770	381	267	138	Mongolia
Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre	tectonic	saline, intermittent, endorheic	2.5-5 million	9690	30.1	6	3	Australia
Lake Tanganyika	tectonic	fresh, permanent	3–6 million	32000	17800	1471	572	Burundi, Congo, Tanzania, Zambia
Caspian Sea	tectonic	saline, permanent, endorheic	5.5 million	374000	78200	1025	182	Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan
Aral Sea	tectonic	saline, permanent	5.5 million	64500	625	67	16	Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan	Formerly the fourth largest lake in the world with an area of 68,000 km² (26,300 sq mi). By 1997, it had shrunk to 10% of its original size due to water that was diverted in the Soviet Era. It is now split into 4 smaller lakes. As of 2023, the Aral Sea has become mostly desert.
Lake Biwa	tectonic	fresh, permanent	5–6 million	674	27.5	104	41	Japan
Lake Tule	tectonic	fresh, permanent	3–15 million	53	40			United States
Lake Maracaibo	tectonic	saline, permanent, coastal bay	20+ million	13010	280	60	25.9	Venezuela	Historically it was an ancient lake. Now, it is a large tidal bay/inlet rather than a lake in the traditional sense. It is saline and directly connected to the Caribbean Sea, leading many to consider it a large lagoon or bay.
Lake Baikal	tectonic	fresh, permanent	25+ million	31500	23000	1741	740	Russia
Issyk-Kul	tectonic	saline, permanent	25 million	6236	1738	668	270	Kyrgyzstan
Lake Vostok	subglacial	fresh, permanent, subglacial	15–35 million	12500	5400	510	432	Antarctica
Lake Zaysan	tectonic	fresh, permanent	65+ million	5510	53	10	5	Kazakhstan	The construction of the Bukhtarma dam inundated the lake, thus, in some sources, the lake is considered a reservoir.^[8]

References

^ ^a ^b Free, Christopher (April 23, 2016). "Ancient lakes of the world". Christopher M. Free. Archived from the original (website) on February 9, 2020. Retrieved 20 January 2024. Most of the hundreds of thousands of inland water bodies on our planet are less than 18,000 years old, but a few lakes and inland seas have existed continuously for more than 1 million years. I present a database of the 20 ancient lakes of the world.
^ "Lake Baikal – UNESCO World Heritage Centre". 1992–2024. Retrieved 20 January 2024. Situated in south-east Siberia, the 3.15-million-ha Lake Baikal is the oldest (25 million years) and deepest (1,700 m) lake in the world. It contains 20% of the world's total unfrozen freshwater reserve.
^ "Lake Baikal: Protection of a unique ecosystem". ScienceDaily. 26 July 2017. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
^ Lucas; Bray; Emry; Hirsch (2012). "Dinosaur eggshell and Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary in the Zaysan Basin, eastern Kazakhstan". Journal of Stratigraphy. 36 (2): 1376–1382. doi:10.1016/j.proenv.2011.09.220.
^ Dorfman, B.F. (2011). "Zaysan-the Only Surviving Cretaceous Lake-May be Lost". Procedia Environmental Sciences. 10 (B): 1376–1382. Bibcode:2011PrEnS..10.1376D. doi:10.1016/j.proenv.2011.09.220.
^ "The Oldest Lakes in the World". World Atlas. 25 August 2017. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
^ "Lake Maracaibo – Lakes of the World". World Atlas. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
^ Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionary, Moscow, 1980, p. 451.

Stoermer, Eugene F.; Smol, J. P. (2001). The Diatoms: Applications for the Environmental and Earth Sciences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP. pp. 209–212. ISBN 9780521582810. OCLC 39515848. Chapter 11.1–11.2.
Wilke, Thomas, Risto Väinölä, and F. Riedel. Patterns and Processes of Speciation in Ancient Lakes: Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium on Speciation in Ancient Lakes, Berlin, Germany, September 4–8, 2006. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer, 2009. 126–28. Print.
Vaillant, J. J., G. D. Haffner, and M. E. Cristescu. "The Ancient Lakes of Indonesia: Towards Integrated Research on Speciation." Integrative and Comparative Biology 51.4 (2011): 634–43. Web. Nov. 2015
Carroll, Alan R.; Bohacs, Kevin M. (February 1, 1999). "Stratigraphic Classification of Ancient Lakes: Balancing Tectonic and Climatic Controls" (PDF). Geology. 27 (2): 99–102. Bibcode:1999Geo....27...99C. doi:10.1130/0091-7613(1999)027<0099:SCOALB>2.3.CO;2. Retrieved 20 January 2024.. Download from researchgate.net.
Hoffmann, N., K. Reicherter, T. Fernández-Steeger, and C. Grützner. "Evolution of Ancient Lake Ohrid: A Tectonic Perspective." Biogeosciences 7.10 (2010): 3377–386. Web. Nov. 2015.