Anthropocene is a term that has been used to refer to the period of time during which humanity has become a planetary force of change. It appears in scientific and social discourse, especially with respect to accelerating geophysical and biochemical changes that characterize the 20th and 21st centuries on Earth. Originally a proposal for a new geological epoch following the Holocene, it was rejected as such in 2024 by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).

The term has been used in research relating to Earth's water, geology, geomorphology, landscape, limnology, hydrology, ecosystems and climate. The effects of human activities on Earth can be seen, for example, in regards to biodiversity loss, and climate change. Various start dates for the Anthropocene have been proposed, ranging from the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution (12,000–15,000 years ago), to as recently as the 1960s. The biologist Eugene F. Stoermer is credited with first coining and using the term anthropocene informally in the 1980s; Paul J. Crutzen re-invented and popularized the term.

The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) of the ICS voted in April 2016 to proceed towards a formal golden spike (GSSP) proposal to define an Anthropocene epoch in the geologic time scale. The group presented the proposal to the International Geological Congress in August 2016.

In May 2019, the AWG voted in favour of submitting a formal proposal to the ICS by 2021.