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submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

The oldest lakes on earth, ranging in age from 130,000 years to many millions of years.

The map was sourced from this research paper:

Hampton, Stephanie & Mcgowan, Suzanne & Ozersky, Ted & Virdis, Salvatore & Vu, Tuong-Thuy & Spanbauer, Trisha & Kraemer, Benjamin & Swann, George & Mackay, Anson & Powers, Stephen & Meyer, Michael & Labou, Stephanie & Oreilly, Catherine & DiCarlo, Morgan & Galloway, Aaron & Fritz, Sherilyn. (2018). Recent ecological change in ancient lakes. Limnology and Oceanography. 63. 10.1002/lno.10938.

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[-] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I'm curious about their definition of "lakes" here. Lake Eyre in Australia is an enormous salt pan. Once every few years when it rains in the desert it briefly becomes flooded. Does that make it a lake?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

The research paper doesn't get into that detail in their definition of "lake," but the authors do seem okay with including lakes that occasionally dry up. They mention in the paper that, "Lake Victoria, presently the world’s largest tropical lake, desiccated during the late Pleistocene (Stager et al. 2011)."

[-] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Aral Sea?? More like Aral Pond. cries

this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
56 points (100.0% liked)

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