The Geologic History of Earth.
Note the timescales. We are currently in the Holocene, which has been warm and moist and a great time to grow human civilization. But the activity of civilization is now pushing the planet into a new epoch which scientists call the Anthropocene.
Interesting reading via NPR
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/10/01/495437158/climate-change-and-the-astrobiology-of-the-anthropocene
#science #anthropocene #climatechange #geology
Anthropocene... Haven't heard that. It lacks a sense of the devastation we are committing.
ReplyDeleteLudovic Stricanne I love the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event (the die off of large mammals between 40K and 10K years ago) It's like a geologic murder-mystery.
ReplyDeleteBut from my reading we're not entirely sure that human hunting was responsible. There are some strong counter points that are discussed on the wiki page.
en.wikipedia.org - Quaternary extinction event - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sure but there's counter evidence in:
ReplyDeleteAfrica (die-off of megafauna, sure, but it stabilizes at a much higher rate) Also the 'entrance' of humanity is suspect to me as human precursors originate in Africa and co-evolved with resident species.
Eurasia, where humans coexist for a significant period of time with regional megafauna prior to die-offs.
The case of the Horse is further very interesting as Horses originate in North America, were introduced (either by natural migration, or by humans) back across the land bridge to Asia, then they die-off in North America with the rest of the mega-fauna.
Presuming Horses migrated to Asia via human domestication, then their total die-off in NA is illogical as humans would keep a domesticated species alive. If they were not domesticated, then the over-hunting theory would indicate existing Asian humans would have hunted them to extinction on the land-bridge and in Asia as well as NA.
There's also not much archeological evidence either way.
We are now in Anthropocene. On geological scale this will be marked, probably, by high amount of plastic microparticles. Plastics are released to environment for many years.
ReplyDeleteWe need add one layer : Stehonezecene (like a sex machine)
ReplyDelete;)