When people talk about the “Anthropocene,” they typically picture the vast impact human societies are having on the planet, from rapid declines in biodiversity to increases in Earth’s temperature by ...

For the first time, researchers can offer a strong quantitative definition for the start of what is known as the Anthropocene, thanks to traces of radioactive material in marine sediments and corals.

FROM rapid climate change to biodiversity loss, the Anthropocene marks our times as an age of human-caused planetary disruption. A working group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy now ...

The Albany Bulb, which consists entirely of concrete “rocks” and other human artifacts, is a local emblem of the Anthropocene age—the time in geologic history when the human imprint is paramount.

Researchers have zeroed in on nine sites that could describe a new geological time, marked by pollution and other signs of human activity. Geologists could soon decide which spot on Earth marks the ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about the philosophy and ethics of science and technology. This article is more than 6 years old. There’s no doubt that ...

Hermann Pfefferkorn’s office, at the University of Pennsylvania, spills across a large, well-lit room that seems to have closed in on itself with shelves and cabinets and papers generated during his ...

Charles Sturt University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU. Yesterday in Part 1 I argued that the most enduring of the great crimes of the 20th century will surely prove to be human ...

Man’s tenure on Earth is brief on the astronomical time scale, but the changes wrought by Homo sapiens have been measurable and profound. Now, a growing number of scientists propose renaming the ...

Every high school kid knows what an ecosystem is, but ask them about the waste- and manufacturing-centric ecosystems that have sprung up since the industrial revolution and they’ll look at you funny.

Wolfgang Lucht is an Earth-system scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and at Humboldt University in Berlin. In 1864, palaeontologist Édouard Lartet made a stunning discovery ...