https://www.science.org/content/article/anthropocene-dead-long-live-anthropocene By PAUL VOOSEN , Science.  Excerpt: ...a panel of two dozen geologists has voted down a proposal to end the Holocene—our current span of geologic time, which began 11,700 years ago at the end of the last ice age—and inaugurate a new epoch, the Anthropocene. ...Few opponents of the Anthropocene proposal doubted the enormous impact that human influence, including climate change, is having on the planet. But some felt the proposed marker of the epoch—some 10 centimeters of mud from  Canada’s Crawford Lake  that captures the global surge in fossil fuel burning, fertilizer use, and atomic bomb fallout that began in the 1950s—isn’t definitive enough. ...The Anthropocene backers will now have to wait for a decade before their proposal can be considered again. ICS has long instituted this mandatory cooling-off period, given how furious debates can turn, for example, over the boundary between the...

https://eos.org/articles/a-lake-paves-the-way-for-defining-the-anthropocene By Katherine Kornei , Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Just as chemists have their periodic table, Earth scientists can lay claim to their own brightly colored reference diagram: the  International Chronostratigraphic Chart , which divides our planet’s 4.5-billion-year history into meaningful chunks of time. Last month, researchers laid the groundwork for defining the current epoch of geologic time—a new line on that chart—that would cap the Holocene. They voted that Crawford Lake, a small body of water in southern Canada, serve as the reference site of the new proposed geologic epoch: the Anthropocene. ...deciding on one location that typifies humans’ influence on the planet was no small feat, said Waters. The proverbial fingerprints of our species—fallout from nuclear weapons testing, particulate matter from combustion, and nitrogen from fertilizer runoff, to name a few—are littered across the recent geologic record.......

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/anthropocene-geologic-time-crawford-lake/ By Sarah Kaplan ,  Simon Ducroquet ,  Bonnie Jo Mount ,  Frank Hulley-Jones  and  Emily Wright , The Washington Post .  Excerpt: In just seven decades, the scientists say, humans have brought about  greater changes  than they did in more than seven millennia. ...Every new phase of Earth’s history begins with a “ golden spike ” — a spot in the geologic record where proof of a global transformation is perfectly preserved. ...An  exposed Tunisian cliff  face bearing traces of an ancient asteroid impact marks the transition from the age of the dinosaurs to the Cenozoic era. Hydrogen molecules uncovered in Greenland’s ice denote  the start of the Holocene  — the 11,700-year stretch of stable temperatures that encompasses all of human civilization, up to and including the present day. ...In 2009, the  International Commi...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/17/climate/anthropocene-age-geology.html By  Raymond Zhong , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The official timeline of Earth’s history — from the oldest rocks to the‌ dinosaurs to the rise of primates, from the Paleozoic to the Jurassic and all points before and since — could soon include the age of nuclear weapons, human-caused climate change and the proliferation of plastics, garbage and concrete across the planet. In short, the present. ...a panel of scientists on Saturday took a big step toward declaring a new interval of geologic time: the Anthropocene, the age of humans. Our current geologic epoch, the Holocene, began 11,700 years ago with the end of the last big ice age. The panel’s roughly three dozen scholars appear close to recommending that, actually, we have spent the past few decades in a brand-new time unit, one characterized by human-induced, planetary-scale changes that are unfinished but very much underway. “If you were around...

https://www.science.org/content/article/bogs-lakebeds-and-sea-floors-compete-become-anthropocene-s-golden-spike By Paul Voosen, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: If you had to pick one spot that best reflects when human activity became an Earth-shaping force, where would it be? Geoscientists will consider the question this month when they meet to evaluate 12 sites, only one of which can serve as the “golden spike” for the Anthropocene, a proposed geological age beginning in the 1950s amid the fire of nuclear bomb tests and the fumes of  surging fossil fuel use . Although the idea of the Anthropocene  has gained wide traction , it still lacks a formal geological definition. In 2016, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), a group of several dozen geoscientists convened by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS),  settled on the early 1950s as its starting point . But the ICS still needs a formal proposal with an ideal geologic sample recording these global changes—...

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/17/974774461/drawing-a-line-in-the-mud-scientists-debate-when-age-of-humans-began Source:  By  Rebecca Hersher , National Public Radio.  Excerpt: Humans have changed the Earth in such profound ways that scientists say we have entered a new geological period: the Anthropocene Epoch. But when did the new epoch officially begin? ...Teams are studying 11 locations on five continents, looking for a place where rock, mud or ice perfectly capture the global impact of humans. ...ultimately only one site will be crowned the "golden spike" location for the Anthropocene: the place on Earth where a line in the rock, mud or ice exemplifies the unique markers of the age of humans. ...For example, there is a line of pollen and dust in a specific ice core from Antarctica that is the official reference point for the beginning of the Holocene epoch, which commenced when the last ice age ended about 12 thousand years ago. The golden spike location for the end o...