In the 4.6 billion year history of the Earth's birth, geological strata that are most suitable for the era of human prosperity are being selected.
Beppu Bay in Oita Prefecture is included in the 12 candidate sites around the world, and attention will be paid to whether Japan's strata will be selected following "Chibanian".
A working group of the international academic organization "International Union of Geological Sciences" has newly classified the "Anthropocene", the age of human prosperity, into geological time divisions such as "Holocene" and "Pleistocene". We are proceeding with the selection of symbolic strata.
There are 12 candidate sites around the world, including the United States and China, including Beppu Bay in Oita Prefecture, which was proposed by research teams such as Ehime University and the University of Tokyo.
The research team believes that the stratum of Beppu Bay from 1953 onwards contains substances that serve as indicators of human activity, such as the extremely small amounts of plutonium that have spread around the world due to nuclear tests. It is proposed as "Bepwanian", which means "Beppu Bay era", as it is appropriate to symbolize the
The working group is expected to narrow down to one location from among the candidate sites, and attention will be paid to whether Japan's stratum will be selected following "Chibanian", which is named based on the stratum in Ichihara City, Chiba Prefecture.
Ehime University Associate Professor Chinobu Kamichi says, "By defining the beginning of the Anthropocene geologically, I hope to lead society to think seriously about the global environment."