What Fossils Will We Leave Behind in 65 Million Years?
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN points to it in discussions of whether a past industrial civilization would leave detectable evidence.
What it is
Curious Droid asks what traces human civilization would leave in the geological record 65 million years from now. It considers how thin the fossil record of humanity might be.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2019 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Recommends resheku · 2020-01 · on “If we weren’t the first industrial civilization on Earth, would we ever know?”
this youtube channel i like "Curious Droid" made not long ago a video on the subject [this video] What Fossils Will We Leave Behind in 65 Million Years? 65 million years ago the dinosaurs died out, we only know of their existence because of the few fossil remains found. So what if a similar fate were to happen to us humans tomorrow, in 65 million years time what would remain of everything we had created and would there be anything be left for any future intelligent species to find.
Recommends est31 · 2021-05 · on “Freshly made plutonium from outer space found on ocean floor”
Not just subduction but also erosion. Outside of dedicated digging efforts like deep mines or such, the fossils we find today are the ones close to the surface that are almost eroded and will be gone soon (on geologic timescales). There is a nice curious droid video on the topic whether a humans if they went extinct tomorrow, wouldn't create a fossil record similar to dinosaurs, simply because we've been on planet earth for a too short period. [this video] > What we have to remember is that they existed for over 165 million years, 3300 times longer than modern humans have been around and the number of creatures that lived in that time frame alone, not including very small insect-sized ones must b
Cites willis936 · 2019-10 · on “The Arrogance of the Anthropocene”
Outside of a blip in CO2 emissions and soil nitrogen, and a dramatic decrease in biodiversity, we will leave almost no trace if we disappeared tonight. [this video]