Anthropocene

The story

From a combination of anthropo- + -cene modeled on Holocene, Pleistocene, and similar. First attested in the 1960s in the translations of Russian-language scientific articles, possibly with a different meaning. Supposedly coined independently in the 1980s by American biologist Eugene Stoermer and later popularized by Dutch atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen in 2000.

First known use, by meaning

• from 1960s A proposed but rejected geological epoch, in which the effect of human activities on the global environment has disrupted the natural variability of the Holocene, ending the Holocene. (It was rejected as formal scientific nomenclature in 2024 owing to not meeting a bar for how a geological epoch is formally defined.)