Heads Up! If you’re heading outdoors this summer put Crawford Lake Conservation Area on your day trip list. Crawford Lake has been identified by Scientists around the world to mark the starting point of a new geological era known as the Anthropocene Epoch.

Anthropocene is derived from the Greek words meaning ‘anthropo’ for ‘man’ and ‘cene’ for new. The name was coined in 2000 by Biologist Eugene Stormer and Chemist Paul Crutzen.

Evidence of an ancient meteor impact signified the end of The Age of the Dinosaur and the start of the Holocene Epoch. You can find it on a cliff face in Tunisia a country in North Africa. What’s known as The Holocene era, (the era that we’re living in) has been in existence for 11,700 years. Scientists now say that evidence found in the sediment at the bottom of Crawford Lake indicates a ‘Golden Spike’, a change to the earth’s surface that hallmarks the beginning of a new Epoch. This geological era will be documented in realtime and that’s very exciting.

Halton’s Crawford Lake Conservation Area is also known for our Native Heritage. From 1973 to 1987, 11 Longhouses were excavated with over 10,000 artifacts. Longhouse Village takes us back to what daily life was like 600 years ago. 

The lake itself is pretty much a bottomless sink hole with freezing cold water. What’s unique about it, is that it’s a Meromictic Lake.  A deep and element protected lake where the water doesn’t mix and clear cut levels of yearly sediment occur. The sediment denotes a thousand years of environmental history. Little change to the Earth’s surface occurred until the 1950’s when humankind decided to create havoc.

In the 50’s, signs of nuclear weapon testing elsewhere in the world are reflected by traces of radioactive plutonium found in the lake’s sediment. The rise of fossil fuel burning, the advent of acid rain and loss of microbe species have also been preserved layer by layer, over the past 70 years. Never before has the earth’s surface transformed so dramatically in such a short time. The ‘Golden Spike’ might be the scientific proof that the World needs for Survival.