Are We Living in a New Epoch?

concerns that today's leaders must confront. Trash accumulation is another. Since the nineteen fifties, humans have generated about nine billion tons that's eight point three metric tons of plastic and dumped most of it in landfills. Plus Homo sapiens are overpopulating like wild as our numbers skyrocket, loads of other species find themselves on the decline. You and I are now witnessing one of the biggest mass extinction events of

all time. Donald Prothero, a paleontologist and geologist, put it this way. We are a geological force in and of ourselves. Mankind's overall impact on planet Earth has been so dramatic that some scientists then could change to the geologic time scale is in order. According to them, we should reclassify the very recent past as a new unit in time defined by humanities long lasting marks on the world's climate, geology, and biological makeup. This proposed unit has a name, the

anthropasy in epoch, meaning the age of humans. Earth is about four point five four billion years old. Geologists have split its history into large blocks of time called eons, which are further subdivided into eras, those in turn are made up of smaller units called periods. Finally, the divisions within a period are known as epochs. So right now we're living in the co ordinary period of the Cenozoic Era, which is part of the Phanerozoic eon. But the question

is what's the current epoch. If you'd asked someone a hundred years ago, that have said the Holocene Epoch. But therein lies the debate. Earth's most recent ice age ended eleven thousand seven years ago. That point in time is recognized as the end of the Pleistocene epoch, which began just less than two point six million years ago, and the dawn of the Holocene Epoch. The dividing lines between epox correspond with important moments in Earth's history, like abrupt

changes in the climate. Evidence for these events is typically found within the layers or strata of rock on our planet. Ice core samples may also contain clues. Persaro explained, nowadays, epos are defined by a section of rock that has distinctive boundaries at the top and bottom. He added that specific epox are also sometimes characterized by the presence or absence of key fossils, though note that larger changes, like the mass extinction of the non avian dinosaurs, are marked

by changes in eras. Our Cenozoic era, for example, is the age of mammals. The end of the Last Ice Age marked the beginning of the Holocene and established its lower boundary. It's traditionally been thought that this particular epoch is still going on today, but in the year two thousand, Nobel Laureate Paul Krutston helped popularize an alternative viewpoint. That year, heat and biologist Eugene F. Stormer argued that recent human activities had pushed the world out of the Holocene and

into a new epoch. Decades earlier, Stormer had coined the term Anthropocene, derived from the Greek word for human, as a possible name for this hypothetical new unit of geologic time, It's stuck. The International Commission on Strategraphy is the body that standardizes the geologic time scale. It has yet to recognize the Anthropocene as an official epoch, although the topic

has been discussed. As of this writing, the Commission maintains the Holocene is still ongoing, but maybe scientists will feel differently someday. Pharos heard it argued that geologists living in the far off future, perhaps even tens of millions of years from now quote, could tell when humans were here because we've left so many traces in the rocks. Chemical traces as well as actual physical objects like trash. Seawater

absorbs about one fourth of our carbon dioxide emissions. This has led to widespread ocean a certification which will doubt us leave telltale limestones behind. Dissolved carbonates in the sediment are going to be another one of our calling cards. Future paleontologists may also notice the sudden disappearance of a great many species from the fossil record. We would also expect, as yet unborn researchers to discover the radiometric signatures of

nuclear weaponry all around the world. Plutonium two thirty nine, which is uncommon in nature, was embedded in sediments that lay exposed to the air during the nuclear tests of the nineteen forties, and that brings us to a bone of contention about the Anthropocene. If it really is a legitimate geological epoch, what moment in history should we recognize

as its starting point. One argument is that the Anthropocene began in the nineteen forties, when the first atomic weapon detonations occurred, like the famous Trinity nuclear test of nine. Another option might be to define the Anthropocene as everything

that's happened since the Industrial Revolution kicked off. Per thea said, others have wanted to push the lower boundary date all the way back to when humans really started transforming the planet, at the beginning of civilization and agriculture, at least ten or eleven thousand years ago. Regardless, if the geological community ever officially splits up the Holocene and rebrands these past few decades, century or millennia as the anthroposy, and a

potential benefit might be the gestures symbolic value. Kreston and many others hope it would send a powerful message to governments and private citizens alike. As Perso puts it, when you use that term, everyone else then realizes the geologists are making a statement about what we've done to the planet. Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini and produced by

Tyler Clang for iHeart Media and How Stuff Works. If this episode piqued your interest about where our world is going, check out the podcast The End of the World Josh Clark for more existential dread and what we can do to help fix it, And of course, for more on this and lots of other earth changing topics, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com.