The largest lake in Earth’s history is now in the Guinness Book of World Records. Lake Paratethys – or Lake Paratethys, if you will – contains ten times more water than all of Earth’s modern lakes. In other words, it’s a long overstatement of its place in the Guinness Book.
At its height, the Paratythis River extended from Austria in the west to Turkmenistan in the east. It covered an area of 1.08 million square miles (2.8 million km2) and contained about 407,000 cubic miles (1.77 million km3) of water. It was research detailing the precise measurements of the lake Published in Scientific Reports In 2021, and now the size of the lake has been documented in the Guinness Book of World Records – hardly a comprehensive atlas of absolute truths but still a remarkable accolade.
Paratethes has been around for about 11.6 million years. It included giant species, such as the baleen whale Cetotherium rebinini– It is the smallest known baleen whale – and the surrounding swamps were home to the porpoise DeinotheriumGiant, even among its elephant relatives.
The lake dried up over millions of years, losing more than a third of its water and about two-thirds of its surface area over a period that extended 350,000 years and ended about 7.65 million years ago. According to the Guinness World Records website. The Black Sea, Caspian Sea and Aral Sea are the main remnants of this magnificent lake.
“Our exploration of Parathethys goes beyond mere curiosity. It reveals an ecosystem that is highly responsive to climate fluctuations,” Dan Balko, an earth scientist at Utrecht University, said in a blog post. launch. “By exploring the catastrophes this massive, ancient lake has suffered as a result of climate change, we are gaining invaluable insights that could point the way to addressing current and future crises in toxic seas, like the Black Sea.”
The release notes that Black Sea sediments contain trapped methane, which could be released into the atmosphere due to climate change. By the same token, the sea can act as a carbon sink, storing greenhouse gases. The loss of the Paratithis River offers lessons about how current climate change could alter our water sources and environment.
“The world’s largest lake ever” is a much cooler record than some of the very specific records in the book, such as the one Loss of most personal wealthor the Heaviest self-powered vehicleOr (and I can’t believe I’m writing this) it is the film with the largest number of film productions attended by the same film, Awarded to a Florida man to see Spider-Man: No way home 292 times. There’s no way home, actually.
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