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Time is divided by geologists according to marked shifts in Earth's state. Recent global environmental changes suggest that Earth may have entered a new human-dominated geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Here we review the historical genesis of the idea and assess anthropogenic signatures in the geological record against the formal requirements for the recognition of a new epoch. The evidence suggests that of the various proposed dates two do appear to conform to the criteria to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene: 1610 and 1964. The formal establishment of an Anthropocene Epoch would mark a fundamental change in the relationship between humans and the Earth system., Human activity has been a geologically recent, yet profound, influence on the global environment. The magnitude, variety and longevity of human-induced changes, including land surface transformation and changing the composition [...]

Author(s): Mark Maslin (corresponding author) [1] Forty years ago, Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton [1] published one of the most influential papers in the study of Earth's past climate. The authors [...]

Author(s): Gerald H. Haug (corresponding author) [1]; Andrey Ganopolski [2]; Daniel M. Sigman [3]; Antoni Rosell-Mele [4]; George E. A. Swann [5]; Ralf Tiedemann [6]; Samuel L. Jaccard [7]; Jörg [...]

Author(s): Lucien Georgeson (corresponding author) [1]; Mark Maslin [2]; Martyn Poessinouw [3] The Paris climate agreement to keep global average temperature rise below 2 [degrees]C requires the world to switch [...]

Carbon emissions rose to an all-time high in 2010, and international negotiations to agree binding national carbon-emissions targets have so far failed. However, intergovernmental failings have not slowed the expansion [...]

Lake sediments in 10 Ethiopian, Kenyan, and Tanzanian rift basins suggest that there were three humid periods at 2.7 to 2.5 million years ago (Ma), 1.9 to 1.7 Ma, and 1.1 to 0.9 Ma, superimposed on the longer-term aridification of East Africa. These humid periods correlate with increased aridity in northwest and northeast Africa and with substantial global climate transitions. These episodes could have had important impacts on the speciation and dispersal of mammals and hominins, because a number of key events, such as the origin of the genus Homo and the evolution of the species Homo erectus, took place in this region during that time., Recent investigations of both terrestrial and marine paleoclimate archives have led to a concerted debate regarding the nature of Late Cenozoic environmental changes in East Africa and their influence on [...]

For the fifth major assessment of climate science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), due to be released next year, climate scientists face a serious public-image problem. The [...]

One of the most pressing questions concerning future climate change is how it will affect the terrestrial vegetation (1). Nowhere is this more hotly debated than in the tropics, where [...]

Author(s): Mark Maslin [1] Sir Emilio Artacho, in Correspondence ('Reader-appeal should not outweigh merit of research' Nature 439, 534; 200610.1038/439534d), raises an important point concerning the growing tension between merit [...]