The Anthropocene was rejected as a geological epoch – but the idea is still changing how we see the world

By Jan Zalasiewicz, Professor of Palaeobiology, University of Leicester
Colin Waters, Honorary Professor, Department of Geology, University of Leicester
Martin J. Head, Professor of Earth Sciences, Brock University

The Anthropocene became part of the zeitgeist after Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen launched the idea in 2000. This is the notion that a crescendo of human impacts has recently propelled the Earth out of the relatively stable climatic conditions of the Holocene epoch, during which human civilisation developed and flourished, to produce a new kind of planet.

Then, the idea seemingly crashed to earth in 2024 when the International Commission on Stratigraphy rejected…

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