This Siberian Lake Holds More Water Than All the American Great Lakes Combined

Lake Baikal in Siberia reaches depths of over 1,600 meters, making it the deepest lake on Earth — in some spots, its floor sits below the base of the mountains surrounding it.

Baikal is estimated to be over 25 million years old, making it one of the oldest lakes on the planet — for comparison, most lakes in the world exist for at most a few tens of thousands of years before silting up, long before reaching that kind of age.

The volume of water in Baikal is so enormous that the lake alone holds a significant percentage of all unfrozen surface fresh water on Earth — more than all five American Great Lakes combined.

Thanks to its age and isolation, Baikal has become home to hundreds of species of animals and plants found nowhere else in the world, including the only freshwater seal species on the planet.