That seemingly simple ... time period we live in. According to the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), the professional organization in charge of defining Earth’s time scale ...

The geologic time scale was not entirely intentional, at least at its start. In the early 1800s, geologists began to create maps and descriptions showing where different types of rocks occurred ...

So much so, in fact, that it has become widely accepted that the Anthropocene – the geological epoch dominated by human activity – is already set in stone on the geological time scale ...