The Baikal is largest in volume freshwater lake in the world. It is located is the huge fault of the earth crust. Such fault is called "rift". Geologists suppose that rift is the beginning stage of the ocean development. Is the Baikal rift upcomming geological structure or it appeared in the past during the planetary catastriphic event and do not develops now? Uniformitarian geologists believe that it is developed structure and it appeared 25 Ma years ago.

In the 2001 we plan to begin detail research of this problem by geological literature and also to have field investigation on the Baikal region.