{"id":25927,"date":"2026-01-22T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/?p=25927"},"modified":"2026-01-21T08:03:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T13:03:32","slug":"it-is-between-300-and-400-million-years-old-flows-through-mountains-as-if-they-did-not-exist-and-has-survived-mass-extinctions-now-the-oldest-river-on-the-planet-faces-its-most-modern-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/it-is-between-300-and-400-million-years-old-flows-through-mountains-as-if-they-did-not-exist-and-has-survived-mass-extinctions-now-the-oldest-river-on-the-planet-faces-its-most-modern-threat\/25927\/","title":{"rendered":"It is between 300 and 400 million years old, flows through mountains as if they did not exist, and has survived mass extinctions: now, the oldest river on the planet faces its most modern threat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rivers can feel timeless when you stand on a bridge and watch the water slide by. Yet they are born, reshaped, and sometimes vanish altogether. By current evidence, the oldest river still following its ancient course is the Finke River in central Australia<\/a>, known as Larapinta in the Indigenous Arrernte language, and it is estimated to be between 300 million and 400 million years old, which makes it older than the dinosaurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, this record-holding river<\/a> does not look like a mighty Amazon. It stretches for more than 400 miles (about 640 kilometers) across Australia\u2019s Northern Territory and South Australia<\/a>, but in such an arid landscape that for most of the year it survives as a chain of muddy waterholes. When rare floods do arrive, they briefly stitch those pools together into a flowing ribbon, then retreat again. So how do scientists know that this intermittent river is so incredibly old?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One key clue is hidden in how the river ignores the rules of common sense. Typically, flowing water will wind its way around hard rock, taking the path of least resistance. The Finke does the opposite. As it crosses the MacDonnell Ranges in central Australia, it cuts straight through tough quartzite ridges instead of curving around them. Geomorphologists call this pattern cross-axial drainage<\/a>, and it strongly suggests that the river was already in place before those mountains rose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read More: For more than a century, the ocean has prevented a severe global drought, but almost no one has described it that way<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

That idea is backed up by the region\u2019s tectonic history. The MacDonnell Ranges, also known as Tjoritja, formed during a mountain building event called the Alice Springs Orogeny, which unfolded roughly 300 million to 400 million years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the river was cutting down while the mountains were being pushed up, as researchers argue, then the Finke is at least as old as those ranges and possibly older. In other words, it is what scientists call an antecedent river, one that holds its course even as the landscape around it buckles and lifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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