is locally referred to as 'the loneliest tree in the world' with the next closest tree over 125 miles (200km) away on the Auckland Islands.

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The golden spike was created by the culmination of mostly Northern Hemisphere atmospheric thermonuclear bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s.

The signal was fixed in the wood of the Campbell Island Sitka spruce by photosynthesis.

'We were incredibly excited to find this signal in the Southern Hemisphere on a remote island, because for the first time it gave us a well-defined global signature for a new geological epoch that could be preserved in the geological record,' said lead author Professor Chris Turney from the University of New South Wales.

'Thousands of years from now this golden spike should still stand asa detectable marker for the transformation of the Earth by humankind,' added Professor Turney.

The radiocarbon peak - known as the golden spike - was created by the culmination of mostly Northern Hemisphere atmospheric thermonuclear bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s. The first nuclear test happened in 1954 (pictured) and triggered the nuclear age

In the Northern Hemisphere, the atmospheric radiocarbon peak occurred in 1964 where the signal is preserved in European trees.

That same peak took until late 1965 (October – December) to reach the Southern Hemisphere atmosphere.

With that spruce, the signal became global, precise and detectable in the geological record, meaning it fitted the requirements as a marker for a new epoch.

The 100-year-old tree itself is an anomaly in the Southern Ocean.

WHAT IS THE ANTHROPOCENE? The Anthropocene is