Anthropocene: Geologists will choose birthplace of a new epoch this year

Whether we are in a new geological epoch is still up for debate, but geologists have almost decided where on Earth should be the official birthplace of the Anthropocene

By Adam Vaughan

A long-running effort to declare that the global impact of humans is enough to establish a new geological epoch will come to a head this year – when a decision is made on the best site to officially mark the beginning of the Anthropocene.

The past 11,650 or so years form a geological unit of time known as the Holocene, considered a climatically benign epoch in the planet’s history that allowed civilisation to flourish. …