The Grand Canyon Is 65 Million Years Older Than Thought

The Grand Canyon's outstanding beauty has certainly stood the test of time - and now it has emerged that time is actually 65 million years older than previously thought. Researchers say it was carved some 70 million years ago - at a time when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth.

Most previous estimates have put its age at 5 million to 6 million years, based on the age of gravel washed downstream by the ancestral Colorado River. But now a team from the University of Colorado Boulder, who used radioactive decay and thermal dating to make their estimate, say the Grand Canyon is much, much older.