There’s no question about it. A new epoch—the Anthropocene—has begun. 

So says an international group of geoscientists, in a paper published Friday in the journal Science. They point to waste disposal, fossil fuel combustion, increased fertilizer use, the testing and dropping of nuclear weapons, deforestation, and more as evidence that human activity has pushed the Earth into the new age that takes its name from the Greek anthropos, or human being.

Some argue the new era began in the 1950s, the decade that marks the beginning of the so-called “Great Acceleration,” when human population and its consumption patterns suddenly speeded up, and nuclear weapons tests dispersed radioactive elements across the globe.

Formalizing the Anthropocene era—a designation that must come officially from a separate body known as the International Commission on Stratigraphy—they write, “expresses the extent to which humanity is driving rapid and widespread changes to the Earth system that will variously persist and potentially intensify into the future.” The scientists are likely to present their findings to the Commission later this year.

“What this paper does is to say the changes are as big as those that happened at the end of the last ice age,” Colin Waters, principal geologist at the British Geological Survey and an author of the study, told the Guardian. “This is a big deal.”