The Yangtze river in China, the third-longest river in the world, is 40 million years older than previously thought, a new study has revealed. A team, led by Durham University in Britain, has found that the Yangtze River began to cut the Three Gorges — Sichuan Basin in the west from lowlands of central and eastern China to the east — 45 million years ago, making it much older than was previously believed.
Prior work on the origin of the Three Gorges has shown that the Yangtze River most likely began as a set of small, non-descript streams that drained both west and east, out of a range of low mountains in central China.
But, Mr Alexander Densmore, who led the team, said, “The Yangtze river is much older than previously thought and extremely high incision rates were not required to create the distinctive gorges. It formed slowly over a longer time span.”
The new findings, published in the Geology journal, show that sediments from the Three Gorges must have been deposited long after Three Gorges got cut.