Interesting geological facts about Lake Tahoe

[rrrr]

A recent study has determined it's the third oldest lake on Earth, formed more than 2.3 million years ago.

https://www.sfgate.com/renotahoe/article/tahoe-oldest-lake-north-america-third-in-world-19786727.php

 

[Eliminator21vdrive]

Strange I thought the sierras were a young range by comparison?

 

[Cray Paper]

Maybe the lake was at a much lower elevation and pushed upwards over the 2 million years by tectonic plate upheaval? It's a beautiful lake and the water is so clear. The 2 oldest lakes are 8-10 million years old.

A random thought that have bounced around in my head since I was a kid...the water we have on the planet now is the same water that has been here for 4.5 billion years...so the water we drink has been drunk by dinosaurs, just about every vegetation to ever exist and probably by millions of humans prior to us drinking it today I've brought this up to my ex wives' and children and got the same "WTF" look. I used to mess with my sons and ask if they wanted some dyno piss or juice when they asked for something to drink.

Another oddity that fascinates me, lake depth. I have never been on a boat on Lake Tahoe or seen Crater Lake in person (except from a plane) but have been on the 3rd deepest lake in the US, Lake Chelan. It is located in eastern WA, east of the Cascade Mountain range and is about 1500' deep. The surface elevation is +/- 1100' above sea level. Its a long way from the Pacific ocean and has a large mountain range between them but the bottom is 400' below ocean level.

 

[rrrr]

Maybe the lake was at a much lower elevation and pushed upwards over the 2 million years by tectonic plate upheaval? It's a beautiful lake and the water is so clear. The 2 oldest lakes are 8-10 million years old.

A random thought that have bounced around in my head since I was a kid...the water we have on the planet now is the same water that has been here for 4.5 billion years...so the water we drink has been drunk by dinosaurs, just about every vegetation to ever exist and probably by millions of humans prior to us drinking it today I've brought this up to my ex wives' and children and got the same "WTF" look. I used to mess with my sons and ask if they wanted some dyno piss or juice when they asked for something to drink.

Another oddity that fascinates me, lake depth. I have never been on a boat on Lake Tahoe or seen Crater Lake in person (except from a plane) but have been on the 3rd deepest lake in the US, Lake Chelan. It is located in eastern WA, east of the Cascade Mountain range and is about 1500' deep. The surface elevation is +/- 1100' above sea level. Its a long way from the Pacific ocean and has a large mountain range between them but the bottom is 400' below ocean level.

Good comments.

The article I linked discusses how the relationship between adjacent tectonic plates and their movement over millions of years created the extreme depth of the three oldest bodies of water, Lakes Baikal, Tanganyika, and Tahoe. Crater Lake is also mentioned.

It's quite interesting.

 

[Good Stuff]

Strange I thought the sierras were a young range by comparison?

Seems to be the most concise breakdown of the timeline:

The ancestral Sierra Nevada began as a volcanic chain more than 100 million years ago, a time when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. New work published Nov. 15 as chapters in a Geological Society of America Special Paper on the paleogeography and topography of the western U.S. suggests that the mountains later "died" – meaning they were dwarfed by a vast plateau—during a region-wide volcanic flare-up about 40 million to 20 million years ago. Then, they were "reborn" about 10 million years ago, lifting to the scenic heights we know today.

"The highest points 40 to 20 million years ago were in central Nevada. Then, basin and range faulting came along and broke it all up, and now the Sierra Nevada is the westernmost or last of those major fault blocks," Miller said. "As a mountain range, it's had three completely different histories."

Sierra Nevada shown to have two geologic birthdays

When geologist Elizabeth Miller started mapping a fault system in Death Valley, she questioned the origin of some sedimentary rocks previously assumed to be locally derived. Now, analysis has revealed where they really came from: central Nevada, indicating that part of today's Great Basin was...

phys.org