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.
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?
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).”