Earth Begins New Epoch Because of Humans

British geologists suggest humans have so changed the Earth that the planet has ended its Holocene era and has entered a new epoch — the Anthropocene.

Jan Zalasiewicz and colleagues at the University of Leicester said Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, in 2002, suggested the Earth had left the Holocene and started the Anthropocene era because of the global environmental effects of increased human population and economic development.

The researchers said they have now documented a radical, yet compelling, case for the idea that the appearance of humans has so physically changed Earth that there is no organic justification for linking pre- and post-industrialized Earth within the same epoch — the Holocene.

The scientists said their findings present the scholarly groundwork for the formal adoption by the International Commission on Stratigraphy of the Anthropocene as the youngest epoch of, and most recent addition to, the Earth’s geological timescale.

The research is presented in the journal Geology.