One of the many things to appreciate about our home planet is that there is a kind of time machine hidden in the rock layers. These layers tell us so much about our tumultuous history of glaciers, volcanoes and asteroid impacts, as well as the plants and animals that lived, evolved and died over centuries.
There is no doubt that future geologists and archaeologists will find much to interest them in the layer now being constructed: strange materials from plastic to plutonium and dramatic changes in the nature of fossilized plants and animals. And yet a group of scientists recently rejected a proposal to rename our current era: the Anthropocene, derived from the Greek word for human.
That’s too bad. It’s an appropriate name and a scientifically sound idea – and it seems to have been thrown out on technicalities.
