How chickens became the ultimate symbol of the Anthropocene
Thursday, December 13, 2018 - 09:50
in Paleontology & Archaeology
We are living on the planet of the chickens. The broiler (meat) chicken now outweighs all wild birds put together by three to one. It is the most numerous vertebrate (not just bird) species on land, with 23 billion alive at any one time. Across the world, chicken is the most commonly eaten meat. This has made it a vivid symbol of the Anthropocene – the proposed new geological epoch that marks the overwhelming impact of humans on the Earth's surface geological processes. The modern bird is now so changed from its ancestors, that its distinctive bones will undoubtedly become fossilised markers of the time when humans reigned the planet.