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Imagine the planet, tens of millions of years. Homo sapiens as a species is probably long gone and was wiped out by a mass extinction that she triggered.
What traces is humanity in old layers of rock for future paleontologists embedded to recognize, study and puzzle? It is a question that two scientists want to answer in a new book.
Humankind’s decisive will differs dramatically from the skeletons, bones and other biological traces that provide today’s fossil records, according to the authors Sarah Gabbott and Jan Zalaiewicz, both paleontologists at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom.
A completely new selection of fossils and a new style of fossilization are already appearing on earth, they say. MASE OFFER PLASTIC CALLS, BALLISTION, concrete building, tea bags, wind turbines, cell phones, T-shirts, aluminum sockets weighing the living world and forming characteristic, even if it is sometimes difficult to interpret, information on our existence.
CNN spoke to the authors of “thrown away: How Technofossils will be our ultimate heritage” in order to understand which elements from our technology -powered civilization are probably the fossils of the future and our eternal geological signature.
This interview was processed for length and clarity.
Electronic waste such as smartphones and keyboards are probably under techno fossils. – Sarah Gabbott
CNN: What was the starting point for this book?
Jan Zalasiewicz: Sarah has spent a career to look at some of the strangest and most wonderful and best preserved fossils, which were enough for half a billion years and much more to see exactly how they protect themselves. I am also a paleontologist and I am involved in this idea of the anthropocene: that people change the geology of the earth in a large way.
We have worked on the question of what kind of fossils we leave from all the things we do and do, and what will tell us? And what could say some hypothetical, other beings, we say 100 million years in the future, who could happen with what we are leaving?
CNN: What will the fossils of the future be?
Sarah Gabbott: I think we have to think about plastic in terms of common objects. You are not only found on landfill, but in ocean -seek and pretty much everywhere. Plastic water bottles, for example, we make loads and charges of it. We make 100 billion clothes every year, and about 60% of which are based on plastic. With regard to what will really be common, I think that things like plastic bottles, plastic bags, ballpoint pen, etc. and so on. And then also clothes. I think it will be a very distinctive signature.
Clothing is largely invisible in the archaeological recording, and we really change the chances instead of wearing things that are excellent for all types of insects and microbes, and suddenly things that are almost completely indigestible. There will be this explosion of things that will be very difficult to destroy and really easily fossil.
CNN: How easy is it that something is petrified?
Gabbott: In terms of fossils of plants and animals, there is a lot of luck. Fossilization is rare. However, you can carry out your happiness by dying in certain environments. You want to die and be buried in an environment where you will be buried very quickly. And if you want to become a super duper, exceptionally beautiful preserved fossil in which all your soft tissues are preserved, you would like to die in sediments that are anoxic (without oxygen) or hypersalin.
I would say that most of the materials we do actually have a higher conservation potential than organic materials. We make these objects and these materials very durable to resist the weathering, to resist the sunlight, to resist the abrasion and not to be eaten by other animals. We really give all of these materials a struggle chance to be petrified. And then we glue charges of them on huge landfill, where we take water away and wrap them in plastic, and we make them huge sarcophagers who have really fabulous conditions to help things fossilize.
Plastic can end as the most ongoing heritage of mankind, according to the book. – University of Leicester
CNN: Will it be possible for entire cities to fossil fossil cities?
Zalasiewicz: If you come from a city in the hills, like Manchester, where I come in Northern England, it is on the pennines (a British mountain range) that rises very slowly. No matter what, no matter what, everything will undermine and collapse. The detritus is washed into the sea. There will be indications, but you know that it is difficult to read for future paleontologists.
But let’s say you are in New Orleans and Amsterdam. They are located on crust pieces, which sink into one that we call as downhill -tectonic escalators. At the same time, the sea level increases so that these cities are drowned. What you will have is certainly the type of substructure, all stacks, the U -Bahn systems and so on. You have a really good chance to survive more or less intact. As soon as they are buried, if they accumulate sediment, the likelihood of fossilization is really good.
The stuff above, the skyscrapers and such things, they would imagine that they would collapse in masses of ruins over time. You would have a kind of ruin layer, some of which will be kept again, as this will be under water. You will have these mega fossils Mega Technofossils that extend for thousands of square kilometers. I mean exceptional.
Crazy wind turbines, which can be seen here in a field near Sweetwater, Texas, could one day form an unmistakable techno fossils, the authors said. – Brandon Bell/Getty Images
CNN: Will paleontologists of the future understand what they see when they come across technofossils?
Gabbott: It depends on what you come across. I think you will train pretty quickly. There is this huge scrap place of things. And some of the things there are pretty easy to find out what it was and what it was used for. But other things that could be in common could really find it difficult to find out what it was.
A good example of this could be a cell phone. If you take a smartphone, it’s just a kind of rectangular object. It has a plastic reserve that is preserved beautifully. It has a glass front, but over time, only a few thousand years, glass is basically cloudy.
And in fact it looks pretty ceramic. So there will be this rectangle, and then you will see different metals. But the smartphone conveys very little what it was actually used for. You will see charges and charges of these things. You will know that it was important for civilization, but what was it used for? It is interesting to believe that you will have an evolution series that comes from old mobile phones that were like bricks, the Clamshell and then smartphones. Will you find out?
Another major signal that our future civilization can occur is where the diversity decreases. They will see the masses and masses of the animals that we eat: chickens and cows. We now know that only 4% of mammals are wild mammals on the planet. It’s amazing. With regard to the weight, there are now more domestic dogs on our planet than wild mammals. You will see this massive new configuration of the variety of life.
CNN: Will recycling be more difficult to identify the fossils of the future?
Gabbott: I think. I think. An aluminum socket is a brilliant thing to recycle, but many things are actually quite difficult to recycle. Many of the plastics we use now can be recycled, and that’s it, so we will still get rid of them. They take them difficult to recycle materials and use them for something else. So now we grind plastic and make streets out of them. This development will give the way the materials are used.
CNN: What will be the most spectacular techno fossils?
Zalasiewicz: The type of fossil that makes us breathe and write the press releases is when you find the feathers that are trapped in rocks, dinosaurs. Not only bones, but also blood vessels in the bones and similar things. I suspect that we can create many circumstances under which you can receive this amazing preservation. We make and throw many things like epoxy resin that will work like Amber. We throw many materials in conditions under which there is a lack of oxygen so that they slow down the decay. One would guess a wonderful and extraordinary preservation here and there (it will be) that they will happen due to the circumstances we have completely exposed.
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