Anthropocene

The Anthropocene was the last epoch of the Quaternary Period. It was a relatively short epoch characterized by human-driven global warming and the ecological shifts it caused.

Timeline
Alternate dates have been proposed to mark the start of the Anthropocene, but its chief agent of change, Homo sapiens, evolved around 350 thousand years before present. Its global expansion resulted in many localized extinctions and extreme modification of the landscape. Human-driven climate change as a process began around 250 years before present, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

The Anthropocene encompassed both the period leading up to the Sixth Mass Extinction and its aftermath. It ended 10 million years from the present with the start of the Recuperatory Epoch, leading into the Second Carboniferous Period.