Our Ancient Lakes: A Natural History

Professor Jeffrey McKinnon, Department of Biology, East Carolina University

Most lakes are less than 15,000 years old and short-lived, but there is a much smaller number of ancient lakes, tectonic in origin and often millions of years old, that are scattered across every continent but Antarctica. Examples include Baikal, Tanganyika, Victoria, Titicaca, and Biwa. Often these lakes are filled with a diversity of fish, crustaceans, snails, and other creatures found nowhere else in the world. Join Jeffrey McKinnon to learn more about the remarkable living diversity of these aquatic bodies and the surprising, often controversial, findings about the formation and persistence of the species living in them.