Know : A list of the oldest rivers on Earth

The age of a river is difficult to determine. Generally, the age is estimated based upon which mountains are the source of the river, the age of any mountains it dissects, the sea or ocean to which it eventually outflows, and where it forms its delta. For instance, if a river dissects a mountain range, then this often means the river existed before the mountain range rose.

Each of these factors can make a final contribution in determining the age of a river. Below follows an incomplete list of rivers older than 1 Ma (One million years = 1,000,000 years).

Continent color key
Africa	Asia	Oceania	Europe	North America	South America

	River	Age (Ma)	Outflow	Most significant criterion for the age
1.	Meuse River	380	North Sea	Paleozoic, dissects the Ardennes during the Hercynian
2.	Finke	350-400	Lake Eyre (intermittent)	Predates the Alice Springs Orogeny; many other rivers in the Northern Territory are of a similar age
2.	Yangtze (Chang Jiang)	365	East China Sea	Crosses Paleozoic and Mesozoic mountains
3.	New River (Kanawha River)	300	Kanawha River	Dissects the Appalachian Mountains
4.	Susquehanna River	300	Chesapeake Bay	Dissects the Appalachian Mountains
5.	Nile	250	Mediterranean Sea	Mesozoic
6.	Rhine	240	North Sea	Triassic, maybe older because of the Hercynian; not the Eocene with the Alps, nor the Miocene with the Upper Rhine Graben
7.	Save	205	Indian Ocean	Formed during rifting when Gondwana broke up.
8.	Amazon	200	Atlantic Ocean	Jurassic, but it seems to have flowed in the opposite direction as an extension of the Congo, i.e. long before the formation of Andes
9.	Amur	125	Sea of Okhotsk	Known to be at least Cretaceous in age, but crosses mountains even older
10.	Macleay River	80	Tasman Sea	Predates uplift of Great Escarpment
11.	Murrumbidgee River	75	Murray River	Predates uplift of Australian Alps
12.	Colorado (Western U.S.)	75	Gulf of California	Uplift during Laramide orogeny, see Geology of the Grand Canyon area
13.	Thames	58	North Sea	Late Palaeocene Period Thanetian Stage.
14.	Indus (Sindhu)	45	Arabian Sea	Source in the Himalayas and Karakoram Mountains

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Courtesy : Wikipedia

 

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