The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age

[muriel_volestrangler]

Humanity’s impact on the Earth is now so profound that a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – needs to be declared, according to an official expert group who presented the recommendation to the International Geological Congress in Cape Town on Monday.

The new epoch should begin about 1950, the experts said, and was likely to be defined by the radioactive elements dispersed across the planet by nuclear bomb tests, although an array of other signals, including plastic pollution, soot from power stations, concrete, and even the bones left by the global proliferation of the domestic chicken were now under consideration.

The current epoch, the Holocene, is the 12,000 years of stable climate since the last ice age during which all human civilisation developed. But the striking acceleration since the mid-20th century of carbon dioxide emissions and sea level rise, the global mass extinction of species, and the transformation of land by deforestation and development mark the end of that slice of geological time, the experts argue. The Earth is so profoundly changed that the Holocene must give way to the Anthropocene.

“The significance of the Anthropocene is that it sets a different trajectory for the Earth system, of which we of course are part,” said Prof Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist at the University of Leicester and chair of the Working Group on the Anthropocene (WGA), which started work in 2009.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth

[Orrex]

1. WE'RE #1! WE'RE #1!

In your face, extinct sauropods!

[GoDawgs]

2. We'll make great pets!

[True Dough]

3. This is pretty damn scary

Glad I didn't bring children into this world to face the daunting future.

[yallerdawg]

4. Brings it into a little perspective.

We are impacting the geologic record!

Not just some footprints in the mud and some fossilized bones - but an entire planet.

That is an astounding eye-opener.

[cstanleytech]

5. So would just about any advanced species in the universe that is of comparable technological

level to our current one

[yallerdawg]

6. Which would explain why we find no evidence of advanced species.

Epochs are most often associated with extinctions, and the geological record indicates why.

To define a new geological epoch, a signal must be found that occurs globally and will be incorporated into deposits in the future geological record. For example, the extinction of the dinosaurs 66m years ago at the end of the Cretaceous epoch is defined by a “golden spike” in sediments around the world of the metal iridium, which was dispersed from the meteorite that collided with Earth to end the dinosaur age.