strati.ch - Lithostratigraphic Lexicon of Switzerland

Representation and status

Historical Variants: anthropozoic era (Stoppani 1873), noosphere (Vernadsky 1926, Teilhard de Chardin ----), Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002, Andersson et al. 2005, Crossland 2005, Zalasiewicz et al. 2010 and 2011a/b)

Age at top

Age at base

Definition: Crutzen Paul J. (2002) : Geology of mankind. Nature 415, 23

p.23: For the past three centuries, the effects of humans on the global environment have escalated. Because of these anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, global climate may depart significantly from natural behaviour for many millennia to come. It seems appropriate to assign the term ‘Anthropocene’ to the present, in many ways human-dominated, geological epoch, supplementing the Holocene — the warm period of the past 10–12 millennia. The Anthropocene could be said to have started in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when analyses of air trapped in polar ice showed the beginning of growing global concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane. This date also happens to coincide with James Watt’s design of the steam engine in 1784.

Definition: Zalasiewicz Jan, Williams M., Fortey R., ... (2001) : Stratigraphy of the Anthropocene. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369, 1036–1055

Important Publications: Zalasiewicz Jan, Williams M., Haywood A., ... (2011) : The Anthropocene: a new epoch of geological time. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369, 835–841

Zalasiewicz Jan, Smith A., Barry T.L., ... (2008) : Are we now living in the Anthropocene. GSA Today 18, 4–8

Zalasiewicz Jan, Williams M., Steffen W., ... (2010) : The new world of the Anthropocene. Environmental Science and Technology 44, 2228–2231