Despite Considerable Age Lines, Grand Canyon Is Actually Relatively Young

By Tobias Alt/Wikipedia.’s inexplicable continuing coverage of the Grand Canyon and its shambolic imitators continues this morning with breaking, 6-million-year-old news. According to a blockbuster study out of the online journal Nature Geoscience—feel pretty stupid for letting your subscription lapse now, huh?—different parts of the Grand Canyon are wildly different ages. (Some scientists had thought that much of the thing was the same age? This actually seems pretty self-evidently not the case.’s companion piece, “But, Like, Duh, Though, Right?: It’s Clearly Too Big to Form All at Once,” will be submitted to the boys at Nature Geoscience shortly.)

Per “Researchers have found that the Eastern Grand Canyon section is around 50 to 70 million years old. On the other hand, the Hurricane section has been found to be around 15 to 25 million years old. The date also hints that the newer sections of the Grand Canyon are around 5 to 7 million years old.” This means, per the headline on, that parts of the Grand Canyon are “much younger than previously thought.”

Should scientists have realized the sections were of different generations when the Eastern Grand Canyon kept using anachronistic racial slurs to refer to the Hurricane section’s boyfriend? Maybe. Although to be fair, the Eastern Grand Canyon has long resisted “modern science” and interaction with “government science doctors,” preferring to maintain its own health by smoking three cigarettes a day and keeping the air conditioning at a steady 61 degrees.