Anthropocene: A New Era in Earth’s History
Over the course of Earth’s history, dramatic changes have occurred in the Earth’s landscape, climate, and biodiversity. And it’s all archived underground.
Layers of the Earth’s crust hold evidence of pivotal moments that changed the Earth’s surface, such as ice ages and asteroid impacts. And scientists recently used this geological timescale to define the next major epoch: the Anthropocene.
This infographic takes a deep dive into the planet. geological timeline It reveals the planetary transitions from one era to another and the specific events that separate them.
Understanding geological timelines
Earth’s geological history is divided into many different units, from antiquity to antiquity. The duration of each is different as it is dictated by major events such as the introduction of a new species and how it fits into the parent unit.
geological chronology | period | example |
---|---|---|
ion | Hundreds of millions to 2 billion years | Phanerozoic |
age | tens of millions to hundreds of millions of years | Cenozoic |
period | millions to tens of millions of years | Quaternary |
age | Hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of years | Holocene |
Year | thousands to millions of years | Meghalaya |
Note: Sub-epochs (between epochs and ages) are also approved for use in 2022, but are not yet clearly defined.
If you cut the mountain in half, you can notice layers that represent changes in time, characterized by differences in chemical composition and accumulated sediment.
Some boundaries are known as “golden spikes” because they are so distinct and widespread in the geological record. Golden spikes can be climatic, magnetic, biological, or isotopic (chemical).
Earth’s geological timeline leading to the Anthropocene
The Earth has gone through many epochs leading up to the modern Anthropocene.
These include the Lower Devonian period, which saw the dawn of the first early shell organisms 400 million years ago, and the three Jurassic periods, when dinosaurs established themselves as the dominant terrestrial vertebrates.
Over the past 11,700 years, we lived in a relatively stable Holocene that allowed human civilization to thrive. However, after thousands of years of human activity, this age is rapidly shifting to the Anthropocene.
age | Its beginning (MYA = 1 million years ago) |
---|---|
Anthropocene | 70 years ago |
Holocene | 0.01 million yen |
Pleistocene | 2.58 million years |
Pliocene | 5.33 million years |
Miocene | 23.04 million years |
Oligocene | 33.9 million years |
Eocene | 56 million yen |
Paleocene | 66 million |
Cretaceous | 145 million |
Jurassic | 201.4 million years |
Triassic | 251.9 million yen |
Lopinzian | 259.5 million |
guadalupian island | 273 million yen |
Sislarian | 300 million yen |
Pennsylvanian | 323.4 million |
Mississippi | 359.3 million yen |
Devonian | 419 million yen |
Silurian | 422.7 million yen |
Ludlow | 426.7 million |
Wenlock | 432.9 million |
laundry | 443.1 million |
Ordovician | 486.90 million yen |
Frontian | 497 million yen |
Miaoling language | 521 million yen |
telenubian | 538.8 million yen |
The Anthropocene is marked by myriad terrestrial imprints, such as the diffusion of plastic particles and marked increases in carbon dioxide levels in sediments.
A New Chapter in Earth’s History
The golden spike of choice for the Anthropocene, the most clearly identified indicator of this change in geological time, is radioactive plutonium from nuclear testing in the 1950s.
The best example was found in Crawford Lake sediments in Ontario, Canada. in the lake, two different water layers They never intermingle, falling sediments settling in separate layers at the bottom over time.
The International Stratigraphic Commission announced the naming of the new epoch in July 2023, but Lake Crawford is still in the process of being approved as a site to mark the new epoch.If elected, our planet will officially Crawfordian era Anthropocene.