Watch: Scientists make announcement on current Earth ‘era’

Watch as scientists made an announcement on Earth’s new “era,” or epoch, on Tuesday, 11 July.

Our planet’s history is divided into different periods of time - epochs - which usually span millions of years.

Researchers announced that Earth is entering a new time period - the Anthropocene.

This period follows the current epoch, the Holocene, which began 11,700 years ago after the last major ice age.

According to the Working Group on the “Anthropocene” at the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, the term “anthropocene” was coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to describe the current geological time interval in which “many conditions and processes on Earth are profoundly altered by human impact.”

Human impact has intensified with the onset of industrialisation, the group says.

The anthropocene is not currently a formally defined geological unit, but a proposal is being developed by the working group.