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Soda can tabs and 1934 penny found inside newly formed beach rocks [1]

['Gail Sherman']

Date: 2025-07-29

In geological terms, we are currently in the Holocene, which began 11,700 years ago, after the Last Glacial Period, known colloquially as the last Ice Age. A new epoch, the Anthropocene, has been proposed to acknowlege the impact that humans have had on the the planet, and the term has come to be used in the media and in other formal contexts.

The Anthropocene Working Group was created to determine if the term would be officially adopted. In 2024, after fifteen years of discussion, in a surprising and highly contentious vote, the group decided against the Anthropocene. The International Union of Geological Sciences later upheld the vote. The lack of agreement on the start date for the new epoch was a factor in the vote, as well as the recency of the proposed starting point at the 1950s, when signs of nuclear fallout began to appear in sediment.

They may want to reconsider their decision after new reseach published in the journal Geology. Derwent Howe in Cumbria, UK was a major center of iron and steel production for well over a hundred years, and during that time millions of tons of slag were dumped onto the coast.

When researchers from the University of Glasgow studied the formerly sandy beach, they discovered an entirely new type of rock, formed by the slag being eroded by the sea, and turning into rock when redeposited on shore. Since the slag was deposited starting in the mid 19th century, this new rock was formed over the course of decades, instead of the usual centuries or millennia.

Even more remarkably, the team found two artefacts firmly entombed in the clast that prove unbelievably rapid rock formation, or lithification. One was a penny coin minted in 1934. The other was an aluminium ring pull-tab from a drink can that could be no more than 36 years old. In other words, lithification is occurring within decades. The researchers propose that this is an entirely new geological process called the "anthropoclastic rock cycle". Science

A new type of rock formed out of waste discarded by humans. As Graham Lawton says in Science, "If that isn't a new geological epoch, then what is?"

Previously:

• How 100-million year old geology affects modern presidential elections

• This professor makes mini-volcanoes with real lava

• The Driftless Area: Wisconsin's strange geology

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