A few weeks ago, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report calling on the world to end its reliance on fossil fuels by 2100. “Since the 1950s, many of the observed changes [in the climate system] are unprecedented over decades to millennia,” the report’s authors wrote, concluding: “human influence on the climate system is clear.”[1] The report is one of many documents that speaks to a question currently plaguing contemporary science: To what extent have humans impacted the earth’s processes, and how can we document those impacts? One answer to this question is the concept of the Anthropocene. “Anthropocene,” as a scientific term, gained traction around 2000 when atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and biologist Eugene Stoermer used it to describe a geological epoch in which human activity has led to environmental, geological, and atmospheric change on a global scale. In the Anthropocene, the two argue, humans have assumed the role of a major geological force.[2] Crutzen and Stoermer locate the origins of the Anthropocene around 1784 (making it coeval with James Watt’s steam engine, itself a metonym for the beginning of the Industrial Revolution) and argue that it is an epoch in which we still live.[3] Since the article’s publication, the concept has sparked heated debate across the sciences: Is there such a thing as the Anthropocene? If so, what kinds of evidence should we marshal to substantiate it?