News Climate

Canada’s Crawford Lake could mark the beginning of the Anthropocene

The proposed geologic epoch denotes when humans began profoundly changing the planet

A photo of Crawford Lake with trees surrounding it.

The mud of Canada’s Crawford Lake (shown) holds an extremely precise record of humans’ influence on Earth.

Sarah Roberts

By McKenzie Prillaman

Scientists are one step closer to defining a new chapter in geology, one in which humans have become the dominant driver of Earth’s climate and environment.

Out of 12 locations around the world, Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada, has been selected as the site that would mark the official beginning of the Anthropocene, a proposed geologic epoch starting in the 1950s, researchers announced at a July 11 news conference during the Max Planck Society Conference for a Sustainable Anthropocene in Berlin.