The Grand Canyon is old, but it may be more than 10 times younger than scientists previously estimated, BBC News reported.

While previous studies put the formation of the world-famous Grand Canyon at 70 million years old, a new one, published Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, differs at five to six million years.

The study researchers say parts of the Grand Canyon truly are ancient, but the entire system is fairly young in comparison.

"The 'old canyon model' has argued that the Grand Canyon was carved 70 million years ago in the same place and to nearly the same depth as the modern canyon. We are refuting that," Karl Karlstrom, of the University of New Mexico, told BBC News. "We are also refuting the 'young canyon model', which claims the canyon was cut entirely in the last six million years. Instead, we show that the Colorado River used some old segments as it found its path from the Rockies to the Gulf of California in the past six million years."

The new research promises to rekindle a debate as old as 140 years as to the actual age of the Grand Canyon. A Wonder of the World, the Grand Canyon stretches 277 miles long, 18 miles wide and nearly a mile deep.

"What's different here I think is that we finally have a description of the Grand Canyon that honors all the hard-won data," said Karlstrom.

According to LiveScience, the Colorado River appeared in the Rockes about 11 million years ago, leaving another mystery to the Grand Canyon. Not involved in the study, Joel Pederson, a geomorphologist at the University of Utah, said he wants to know how the Colorado River became connected to the Grand Canyon.

"You have two groups of people who can take the same samples from the same results and come to really different conclusions," Pederson told LiveScience. "That's the key battle."