"The Anthropocene": Are We Living in a New Geological Era? Experts Say "Yes"

No one can realistically argue that humans haven’t dramatically transformed the face of the planet. But now scientists, who love naming things, propose that humankind has so altered the Earth that that we have brought about an end to one epoch and entered a new age, as different from our recent ancestors' time as the Jurassic was from the Cambrian. Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen calls it the Anthropocene, with "anthro" signifying humanity's biospheric impact. They suggest humans have so changed the Earth that it’s time the Holocene epoch was officially ended. Geologists from the University of Leicester, Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams, and their colleagues on the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London say that humankind has entered a phase where we are so rapidly transforming the planet that a new era has started. Duke University soil scientist Daniel Richter agrees. He says the dirt under our feet is being so changed by humans that it is now appropriate to call this epoch the Anthropocene. “With more than half of all soils on Earth now being cultivated for food crops, grazed, or periodically logged for wood, how to sustain Earth’s soils is becoming a major scientific and policy issue,” Richter said...DailyGalaxy