Discussion highlights anthropocene's status as a new epoch indicating a planetary shift in Earth system dynamics.
The Anthropocene was introduced to denote a dramatic, ongoing, planetary shift from prolonged relative Holocene stability, driving the Earth system into a new functional state outside its natural variability. Now stratigraphically‐grounded, the Anthropocene is de facto a new epoch, not the subjective filtering of all anthropogenic impacts in Earth history.
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Zalasiewicz et al. (2025) studied this question.