The geologists have said sediments at Crawford Lake in Canada’s Ontario have provided evidence of the beginning of the Anthropocene epoch.
- Crawford Lake, which is 29 metres deep and 24,000 square metres wide, was chosen over 11 other sites because the annual effects of human activity on the earth’s soil, atmosphere and biology are so clearly preserved in its layers of sediment.
- The geologists have estimated that the new epoch started sometime between 1950 and 1954. They revealed the findings after analysing the lake’s bottom sediments, which have over the years captured the fallouts of large-scale burning of fossil fuels burning, explosion of nuclear weapons and dumping of plastic and fertilisers on land and in water bodies, pesticides.
About Anthropocene epoch
- Anthropocene epoch is a proposed geological epoch that began when human activity started to have a significant impact on the Earth.
- The Anthropocene epoch as a term was first coined by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen and biology professor Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to denote the present geological time interval, in which the Earth’s ecosystem has gone through radical changes due to human impact, especially since the onset of the Industrial Revolution.
- There are numerous phenomena associated with this epoch, such as global warming, sea-level rise, ocean acidification, mass-scale soil erosion, the advent of deadly heat waves, deterioration of the biosphere and other detrimental changes in the environment.
- Not every geologist agrees that the Anthropocene epoch is a reality as there are disagreements within the scientific community regarding when it began, or has it already begun, or if they have enough evidence to prove its advent.
Mawmluh Cave
- Mawmluh Cave in Meghalaya, locally known as Krem Mawmluh is believed to be the fourth longest cave in the Indian subcontinent with a total length of 7 km of cave passages.
- It is also believed that the stalagmite from this cave helped prove the existence of a 200-year-long drought that occurred after the Ice Age around 4,200 ago, destroying many civilisations around the world. To describe this period, the term ‘Meghalayan Age’ was coined.
- In October 2022, Mawmluh Cave was identified as one of the first 100 geological heritage site by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), a council that works closely with UNESCO.
