‘Technofossils’: how plastic bags and chicken bones will become our eternal legacy | Palaeontology

As eternal evidence of humanity, plastic bags, cheap clothes and chicken bones are not a glorious legacy. But two scientists who explore the elements of our technological civilization are likely to survive for several million years, as fossils have reached a violation of a paradox, but it is useful: fast food and fast fashion will be our eternal geological signature.

“The plastic will definitely” Technofoss “, because it is incredibly solid, we make huge amounts of it, and move around the world,” says Professor Sarah Gabbot, Leicester University expert on the road. The shape of the excavations. “Therefore, wherever these future civilizations are digging, they will find plastic. There will be a plastic signal that will be drawn around the world.”

Fast food containers It dominates the surrounding plasticsBut aluminum drinks will also be part of our legacy. Pure metals are exceptionally rare in the geological registry, as they easily interact to form new minerals, but the cans will leave a distinct impression.

“They will be present in the layers for a long time, and in the end small gardens of mud minerals that grow in the space in which the box was said. The geologist Professor Jean -Zallasvic, a pioneering supporter of anthroposin as a new bus that reflects the influence of modern humanity on this planet, who wrote a book. On the planet, who wrote a book on the planet, who wrote a book on the planet, who wrote a book on the planet, who wrote a book On the planet, who wrote a book on the planet, who wrote a book on the planet, who wrote a book on the planet, who wrote a book on a book on the planet, who wrote a book on the planet, who wrote a book on a book on the planet that wrote a book on a book on the planet that He wrote a book on the planet that wrote a book on the planet that wrote a book on a book on the planet that wrote a book on a book on the planet, and it is a leading supporter of anthropot as a new geological era that reflects the effect Modern humanity on this planet, “will be a distinctive and new type of excavation” will be a new type of fossil. Technofossils, ignorance.

There is also an essential element in fast food, chicken, as well as eternity. Bones are well known as fossils, but while modern sub -hens are fragile – they are raised to live quickly, deadly and young fats – the huge size will guarantee a lot of survival in the geological registry.

At any moment, there are about 25 billion living chickens in the world, more than the most abundant wilderness in the world, says Gabbot and Zallasvic, which makes them likely to be the most abundant bird in Earth’s history. The sudden appearance of large numbers of the brutal bird is five times larger than its wild ancestors will strike the future of cases in the future.

The clothes will also make a sudden entry into the fossil record of humanity. For thousands of years, clothes were made of natural and easy to rot materials such as cotton, linen and silk. Today, the growing population of the world often wears artificial clothes that are widely dumped.

“We make it in ridiculous quantities,” says Gabbot – about 100 billion Jobs per year, twice the number 20 years. “People will surprise the number of clothes already in the environment as well. I work to clean the rivers in Leicester and about a quarter of the things that we take out are clothes. We also paste them in waste burial Indeed, many modern fashion will end up, in a deeper sense, really immortal. “

Another sign techniques is also a more solid: concrete. It is really a rock mainly, so it is easily preserved, and it is present in huge quantities. Sufficient concrete is thrown every year to provide four tons per person on the face of the earth, which increases 500 billion tons.

Zombies cities

All fossils require little luck. This burial usually means under sediments in lakes and seas. So the sunken cities, such as New Orleans, are where huge concrete fossils are likely to form.

Half of the city is already below sea level, and the diagnosis of Gabbott and Zalasiewicz is blatant: “It is a coma city, which will die by drowning, and perhaps later in this century, so it is mature of excavations.” The clouds, the foundations of the construction, the paving panels, the sewage lining and the marine walls in the city will all be a candidate to preserve it.

The sign of unambiguously for a human civilization will be our bones, and those who are buried will actually take the first step to the fossil. But again, those who are moved in the places of drowning are likely to be preserved.

“The mountainous burial lands will not last for a long time,” says Zallasvix. “But if you are in Mississippi [River] Delta, or the Netherlands, or the Yangti Delta, burial lands there, to a large extent, survive. “However, it is likely that the scholars of the fly scientists in the future find our farm leftovers, which We greatly outperformed.

To evaluate the human waste that will survive, Gabbott and Zalasiewicz are made frequent likenesses with existing fossils. Graptolites, a long collection of marine animals that feed the small filters and organic tubes in which they lived, are popular fossils about 500 meters ago. “It seems that the tubes have turned into something of plastic, and some, when extracted from the rock, are still pulsating – it’s unusual,” Zallasvich says.

The cell walls of other green plastic algae provide. “The fossils of about 50 meters are made of these chemical things that are chemically distinguished from polyethylene,” says Gabbot. The geologists concluded the following: “It seems that amazing plastic is most likely to the ground forever.” Forever a long time, and in fact, all fossils will continue only as long as the planet The sun is roaming the Earth.

Underground scars

Excavations are not just things that left behind, but also the effects of the activity of the written life in the rocks and humanity leave a giant imprint. For example, we dug more than 50 kilometers of oil and gas wells, each penetrated through the geological layers.

There was also About 1500 underground nuclear weapons test. Despite relatively rare, the results were amazing geologically: the large spherical caves lined with melted rocks that collapsed in a mass of radioactive rubble surrounded by a complex network of fractures. Along with mines and other gaps, “this global rash of the underground scars is not largely erased,” says Gabbut and Zallasvich.

Just as it is permanent but much more precisely the toxic chemical signal that humanity has left, not the least called it appropriately.Chemicals forever“Like PTFE. Geologists say, but PTFE coating will continue as a thin flexible film.

Humanity has created many semi -destructive chemicals, such as dioxins and DDT. Given that similar molecules produced by bacteria are found in the 1600 -meter rocks in Western Australia, and these chemicals appear to be present. “These chemicals forever are literally everywhere,” says Gabbot. “Then they enter the sediments, then sit there.”

Another part of the hidden signature of humanity is the presence of radiant elements that spray it all over the world through nuclear bombs above Earth, to a large extent between 1952 and 1963. Dawn of anthroposin.

These chemical signs may appear hidden and are unlikely to be discovered in the distant future. But geologists found a similar impact that accompanied the disappearance of dinosaurs: fertilized deposits in Iridium, an element found in meteorites. “Iridium’s height is not at all clear, unless you got a supercondition and only the right level sample. Zallasifix says:” We have found it. “

Our digital age is likely to leave less than the centuries in which knowledge is stored on paper. Old papers and fossil trees show that the paper has an amazing high capacity to be fossil, and the graphite used in pencils is also strong. “It is loved to believe that it may be a scattered for children who may survive the best in everything: a picture of a family outside a house, perhaps, with sunlight and a rainbow retreated across the sky,” says Gabbut and Zallasvic. .

Computer chips, although they are many, small, and silicon very interact with oxygen, which makes them unlikely to be important as a future hoof. But the wires in electronic devices may violate the eye, as the minerals that are formed from copper are beautifully bright and colorful, from the Azoret to the lieutenant to Portnet. Solar panels may also achieve immortality thanks to their distinctive shape and the huge size that is produced.

Their exploration of future fossils extracted Gabot and Zallasvix some conclusions. One of them is that understanding how human waste can become fossils towards the best way to stop waste that accumulates in the environment.

“In making excavations, they are the first few years, contracts, centuries, and thousands of years, which are really decisive,” says Zallasifix. “This interferes with the time we have the ability to do something about it.”

“The big message here is that the amount of things that we make now is the eye of the eye-it is outside the scale,” says Gabbot. All the things that humans made by 1950 were a small part of the mass of all living matter on Earth. But today It exceeds all plants, animals and microbes He is appointed three times by 2040.

“These things will last millions of years, some of which have unleashed their toxins and chemicals in the natural world,” she says, she says, raises dangerous questions for all of us: “Do you need that? Do you really need to buy more?”

It was disposed of: how Technofossils will He is our climax legacy Deployed by Oxford University Press