Earth Science News
Defining the Anthropocene
So Close, Yet Still So Far Away
Geology textbooks say we are living in the Holocene epoch and have been for 11,700 years. That’s when the continental ice sheets of the Pleistocene epoch largely melted away. For years, though, some geologists have said we’ve entered a distinctly new geological epoch, which they have dubbed the Anthropocene. It is marked by massive human activities that have altered the lands, oceans, air and living inhabitants of planet Earth. But it is one thing to declare a new epoch; quite another to prove it and have it accepted within the scientific community. We may be close to such acceptance.