Should humans get their own geologic era?

The debate over the Anthropocene epoch, explained.

The word “Anthropocene” has gained cultural resonance in recent years, as it’s become clearer that humans have made an indelible and destructive impact on our planet. But it’s also a term with a specific technical meaning: an epoch, or geologic unit of time, named for humans.

In 2009, a group of scientists first started investigating whether the Anthropocene should be formally recognized as part of the way we record geologic time.