A movement to declare the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch as finished is gaining steam amongst scientists. Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen suggested in 2000 that human activity was altering the planet sufficiently to rate a new epoch, and a couple of recent papers are giving the idea momentum.
Among the major changes heralding this two-century-old man-made epoch:
- Vastly altered sediment erosion and deposition patterns.
- Major disturbances to the carbon cycle and global temperature.
- Wholesale changes in biology, from altered flowering times to new migration patterns.
- Acidification of the ocean, which threatens tiny marine life that forms the bottom of the food chain.