Researchers accumulating a sediment core pattern from Crawford Lake, Canada
Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Put up by way of Getty Photographs
A protracted-standing effort to formally place the Anthropocene on the geologic timescale got here to a shocking finish this yr. In March, a panel of teachers rejected the proposal to outline a brand new epoch by 12 to 4 votes. But for the staff behind the proposal, work on defining the time period – which highlights speedy, human-induced modifications to Earth – continues.
Because it stands, the Holocene, which started about 11,700 years in the past, stays the present epoch. It broadly covers a interval of planetary stability throughout…
