Welcome to the Anthropocene: We’re in a new era, say researchers

Soil research from a Canadian lake shows, scientists say, that we have entered a new era since 1950. The beginning of the period in which changes in the Earth’s climate and ecology are mainly caused by human activity. The epoch has not yet been internationally recognized by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), so until then we are officially still in the Holocene epoch.

Geologist Kim Cohen of Utrecht University is a member of the ICS committee, which includes the Anthropocene Working Group. He will participate in the discussion and vote if the Anthropocene can become official.

“People have been talking about the Anthropocene for about 15 years, but now scientists have decided where and when this era begins,” he told Editie NL. “Researchers have arrived at Crawford Lake near Toronto in Canada. They have extracted a lump of mud from the bottom and the annual layers are clearly recognizable there.”

Scientists have found plutonium in the layers, which dates back to nuclear testing in the 1950s. “This indicates human action.” In addition, soot particles from coal-fired power plants and changes due to fertilizers were also found.

Coca Cola cane

He expects that next year there will be more clarity on what era we officially find ourselves in. Until then, the Anthropocene is still unofficial.

“The discussion about whether a new epoch should be started has been going on for some time,” Rob van den Berg, paleontologist at Naturalis, told Editie NL. “We talk about the Anthropocene, but sometimes we also say with a wink that the new era should be called the Last Supper of Coca-Cola, because cola cans have been found in our soil for some time.”

“There are about fifty geological epochs, think of the Cretaceous, when the dinosaurs died out, or the Pleistocene, when the mammoth lived.”

Fossil

The determination of a new epoch is done on the basis of fossil changes in the rocks. Personally, Van den Berg thinks it’s too early to set a new period now. “We are now living in the Holocene, which began 11,700,000 years ago. The period before that, the Pleistocene, lasted almost 2.5 million years in total, so there can still be a lot going on. of things. In fact, researchers of the future, if any fossil only determines when which period began.”