Scientists shocked by decision not to define Anthropocene era

Efforts to fit the Anthropocene into geological timescales have fallen at the first hurdle, to the shock of members of the advisory scientific community who only learned of the official decision after it was published. The group of scholars who made the decision rejected the proposal by a vote of 12 to 4, refusing to define a new era based on planetary changes brought about by humans.

Earth’s current era is the Holocene, which began approximately 11,700 years ago and is characterized by an era of progress and prosperity.