Re: HOLOCENE (was: Re: Proposal:New Geologic Era)

[Pieter.Depuydt@rug.ac.be]

> Date:          Tue, 3 Jun 1997 11:02:28 -0500 (EST)
> Reply-to:      millerm@thunder.indstate.edu
> From:          "Michael D. Miller" <millerm@thunder.indstate.edu>
> To:            Tetanurae@aol.com
> Cc:            dinosaur@usc.edu, brucethompson <brucet@mindspring.com>
> Subject:       Re: HOLOCENE (was: Re: Proposal:New Geologic Era)

> 
> 
> On Mon, 2 Jun 1997 Tetanurae@aol.com wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Aren't we in the Holocene by definition forever?  In other words, the
> > Holocene started 10,000 years before this instant in time, and the Holocene 
> > -
> > Pleistocene boundry is forever moving forward in time at exactly 10,000 
> > years
> > ago....  Or am I totally wrong? 
> > 
> 
> You might say that.  However, by saying that the Holocene began 10,000 
> years before this "instant" in time is both partially incorrect and 
> actually just an estimate of an age we cannot be 100% sure about.  But, I 
> would still be hesitant to say that you are totally wrong.  Once we 
> humans have gone the way of the dinos, the question mainly is have we had 
> enough impact on the geologic record to warrant the time that we spend 
> here as a new geologic era?  Good question, but nothing that can really 
> be answered for a long time.

There is some currently held belief that we are now in the middle of 
a mass extinction (see for example Ward: 'The end of evolution' and 
Leakey: 'The fourth extinction), that in fact begun with the 
disappearance of the temperate and arctic zone megafauna.
I don't want to talk doom, but if things keep going on this way and 
at this rate, we will mark a very impressive boundary in the 
geological/fossil record...

Pieter Depuydt