Quest to declare Anthropocene an epoch descends into epic row

Vote against formal geological recognition of ‘age of the humans’ is claimed to have violated committee rules

The quest to declare the Anthropocene an official geological epoch has descended into an epic row, after the validity of a leaked vote that apparently killed the proposal was questioned.

Supporters of the idea have been working on the proposal for 15 years. They say it would formalise the undeniable and irreversible changes that human activity has wreaked on the planet. It would mark the end of the Holocene epoch, the 11,700 years of stable global environment in which the whole of human civilisation developed.