END OF AN EPOCH Plastics, radioactive fallout and the prevalence of domestic animals such as chickens — signs of which show up in the sedimentary record — have made the last few decades distinct in the planet’s stratigraphic record, a group of researchers say.
From left: John Schneider/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0), National Archives image/Wikimedia Commons, Branden Wiegand/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Humankind’s bombs, plastics, chickens and more have altered the planet enough to usher in a new chapter in Earth’s geologic history.