Context: According to the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), sediments at Crawford Lake in Canada’s Ontario have provided evidence of the beginning of the Anthropocene epoch in 1950.

About AWG

• The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) is an interdisciplinary research group dedicated to the study of the Anthropocene as a geological time unit as part of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS).

• It was established in 2009 as part of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS), a constituent body of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS).

Key findings

• Geologists estimated the new epoch (Anthropocene part) of the planet’s time scale between 1950 and 1954.

• After analysis of the bottom sediments of the lake, they captured the fallouts of large-scale burning of fossil fuels, explosion of nuclear weapons and dumping of plastic and fertilisers on land and in water bodies.

• There is a notable increase in the concentration of plutonium (due to detonation of nuclear weapons) particles. This is a clear indication of human fingerprints on the planet.

• The data showed a clear shift from the mid-20th century, which took the system of Earth beyond Holocene period (the epoch that started at the end of the last ice age 11,700 years ago).

What is the Anthropocene epoch?

• The term was first coined by Nobel Prize-winning chemists Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to denote the present geological time interval.

• It marks the period in which the ecosystem of Earth went through radical changes due to human impact, especially since the onset of the Industrial Revolution.

• Many of these changes would persist for millennia or longer, and alter the trajectory of the Earth System, some with permanent effects.

The numerous phenomena associated with this epoch are:

• Global warming

• Sea-level rise

• Ocean acidification

• Mass-scale soil erosion

• Advent of deadly heat waves

• Deterioration of the biosphere

?How is the geological time of Earth divided?

• Most of the boundaries on the geological time scale correspond to the origin or extinction of particular kinds of fossils.

• The principle of faunal succession states that different kinds of fossils characterize different intervals of time.

• It is divided into five broad categories: eons, epochs, eras, periods, epochs and ages.

• The history of Earth is characterised by four eons: Hadeon (oldest), Archean, Proterozoic, and Phanerozoic (youngest).

• The enumeration of these geologic time units is based on stratigraphy, which is the correlation and classification of rock strata – which contains different kinds of fossils characterising different intervals of time.

• Officially, we’re in the Phanerozoic eon, Cenozoic era, Quaternary period, Holocene epoch and the Meghalayan age.

The Holocene epoch

• The Holocene is the current geological epoch, which began approximately 11,700 years ago.

• It follows the Last Glacial Period and the Holocene along with the preceding Pleistocene forms the Quaternary period.

• The Holocene, which has been identified with the current warm period, corresponds with the rapid proliferation, growth and impacts of the human species worldwide.