Nature World: It has long been suggested that our impact on the planet is so substantial that it grants its own new geological epoch - known as the Anthropocene. While the beginning of this new era has been heatedly debated, one group of scientists believes it has finally pinpointed the exact date of when humans began to dominate the Earth.
The year was 1610, when the effects of the collision between the New and Old Worlds, which occurred a century earlier, were first felt around the globe. That is, there was...