Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams at the University of Leicester, and their colleagues on the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London, analyzed a proposal made by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000 that suggested the world has left the Holocene because of the global environmental effects of increased human population and economic development.

They factored in transformed patterns of sediment, disruptions to the carbon cycle and wholesale changes to the world’s plants and animals.

The team argues that the dominance of humans has so physically changed the planetary landscape that post-industrialized Earth can no longer be considered still in the Holocene epoch.

Duke University soil scientist Daniel Richter wrote in the journal Soil Science that more than half of all soils on Earth are now being cultivated for food crops, grazed or periodically logged for wood.

Animation: NASA Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio

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