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Humans versus Earth: the quest to define the Anthropocene

Researchers are hunting for nuclear debris, mercury pollution and other fingerprints of humanity that could designate a new geological epoch.
  1. Meera Subramanian

    1. Meera Subramanian is a freelance journalist in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

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Crawford Lake is so small it takes just 10 minutes to stroll all the way around its shore. But beneath its surface, this pond in southern Ontario in Canada hides something special that is attracting attention from scientists around the globe. They are in search of a distinctive marker buried deep in the mud — a signal designating the moment when humans achieved such power that they started irreversibly transforming the planet. The mud layers in this lake could be ground zero for the Anthropocene — a potential new epoch of geological time.

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Nature 572, 168-170 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02381-2

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 02 October 2019: An earlier version of this story incorrectly located the groups doing some work on samples from Crawford Lake.

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