These discarded objects will form humanity’s lasting geological footprint, paleontologists say
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Imagine tens of millions of years from now. Homo Sapiens is likely to be a type that has been long ago, and has been eliminated by a Collective extinction helped unleash.
What are the effects that humanity included in ancient rock layers for future excavation scientists to discover, study and puzzle? It is a question that aims to answer in a new book.
The distinguished era of Humankind will be significantly different from the bone structures, bones and other biological effects that teach the fossil record today, according to the authors Sarah Gabot and Jean Zallasovic, both of them are fossil scientists at Leicester University in the United Kingdom.
They say that a completely new set of fossils, and a new style of fossils, already appear on the ground. Manufactured objects-plastic bottles, stiffness points, concrete buildings, tea bags, wind turbines, mobile phones, shirts, aluminum boxes-the superior world of the world will be distinctive, if it is sometimes difficult to explain, and evidence of our existence.
CNN spoke to my authors.ignoranceHow will Technofossils be our final legacy “to understand the elements from our technology -based civilization that is likely to form future fossils and our eternal geological signature.
This interview was released for length and clarity.
Electronic waste like smartphones and keyboards may appear between technologies. Sarah Gabbot
CNN: What is the starting point for this book?
Jan Zalasiewicz: Sarah spent a profession in looking at some of the most strange and wonderful fossils and the best preservation, as it ranged half a billion years and more, to find out how exactly it preserves it. I am also a world of excavation, and I am involved in this idea from Anthroposin: Humans change the geology of the earth in a big way.
We have worked on a question about the type of fossils that we will leave from all the things we do and do, and what will tell us that? What might tell some virtual creatures, and the other, let’s say, 100 million years in the future, who may happen as we leave behind?
CNN: What are the excavations in the future?
Sarah Gabbot: I think in terms of common elements, we have to think about plastic. They will not only be found in waste burials but are present in the ocean deposits and everywhere to a large extent. Plastic water bottles, for example, we make loads and many of these. We are making 100 billion clothes Every year, and About 60 % of these depend on plastic. Regarding what will be really common, I think things like plastic bottles, plastic bags, patience pens, etc. Then the clothes too. I think this will be a very special signature.
The clothes are mostly invisible in the archaeological registry, and we really change the possibilities, rather than wearing prominent digestion things for all types of insects and microbes, which makes things that can be almost indisputable. There will be this explosion for things, which will be very difficult to destroy and will easily be stolen.
CNN: How easy is something?
Gabot: In terms of fossils of plants and animals, many of them are lucky. The hole is rare. However, you can have a kind of luck by death in certain environments. You want to die and be buried in an environment where you are buried quickly. And if you want to become an exceptional and exclusive fossil, as all your soft tissue is preserved, you want to die in the oxygen -suffering deposits (lacking oxygen) or super.
I would like to say that most of the materials we make already have memorization capabilities higher than organic matter. We make these things and these materials to be very solid, to resist weathering, to resist sunlight, to resist corrosion and not eating them by other animals. We really give all these materials a chance of fighting in preserving excavations. After that we end up sticking to their loads in giant waste burials, where we take water and wrap them with plastic, and make them in the giant coffin, which has really great conditions to help things become fossilized.
The book argues that plastic may always end as the most human heritage. Leicester University
CNN: Will it be possible to dig the entire cities?
Zalasiewicz: If you are from a city in the hills like Manchester, where you came in northern England, it is located in the state of Pennsylvania (a mountain range in the United Kingdom), which rises very slowly. Ultimately, regardless of what, everything will wear and collapse. The waste will be washed at sea. There will be evidence of this, but you know it will be difficult (for future excavation scientists) to read.
But let’s say that you are in New Orleans and Amsterdam. They are on parts of the dandruff that drown in what we call a Land tectonic stairs. At the same time, sea level rises, so these cities will drown. What you’ll get is definitely every type of infrastructure, all parts, metro systems, etc. They have a really good chance to stay more or less sound. Once you are buried, as soon as the sediments accumulate over you, the chances of the hole are really good.
Things on top, skyscrapers and such things, you may imagine that they will collapse into blocks of rubble over time. You will have a type of rubble layer, and part of it will be kept again, as this will be underwater. You will have this Megafossils, Mega Technofossils, which will extend for thousands of square kilometers. I mean, unusual.
The authors said that the neglected wind turbine blades, which were seen here in a field near Sweetwateer, Texas, could one day form distinctive techniques. – Brandon Bell/Getty Embs
CNN: Do excavation scientists in the future understand what they see when they coincide with techniques?
Gabot: This depends on what they encountered. I think they will work very quickly, there is this huge type of cone. There will be some things in some extent to know what it was and what was used for it. But other things that may be common may be really difficult to know what it was.
A good example of this may be a mobile phone. If you take a smartphone, it is just a type of rectangular object. He got a plastic support, so that he kept beautifully. It contains a glass front, but over time, the glass begins a few years basically, basically cloudy.
In fact, it begins to appear ceramic. Therefore, there will be this rectangle, after which they will be different metals. But the smartphone gives very little in terms of what was already used. They will loads and loads of these things. They will know that it was important for civilization, but what was used for him? It is interesting to believe that they will have an evolutionary chain that is transmitted from old mobile phones that were like bricks, smartphones, then smartphones. Will they discover that?
Another big indication that our future civilization may coincide with the place where diversity decreases. They will see the masses and masses from the animals that we grow to eat: chicken and cows. We only know that 4 % of mammals on this planet are wild mammals. It is amazing. In fact, in weight, there are more local dogs on our planet now more than wild mammals. They will see this tremendous restoration of the diversity of life.
CNN: Will recycle future fossils make it more difficult to get to know them?
Gabot: I think we will start recycling more and more, and there are plans, or at least some ongoing research, to consider trying to dig waste burials, remove materials and recycle those. I think this time period is at the present time, I hope it is more tight. Aluminum box is a great thing to recycle, but it is very difficult to recycle a lot of things. Many of the plastic materials that we use now can be recycled once and that’s all, so we still get rid of them. They will take these materials that are difficult to recycle and use for something else. So we now grind the plastic and take the roads out of it. There will be this development for the way the material is used.
CNN: What will be the most amazing technology?
Zalasiewicz: This type of fossil that causes us to take our breath and start writing press releases is when you find feathers trapped in rock music, dinosaurs; Not only bones, but the blood vessels preserved in the bones and things like this. I think we create a lot of conditions as you can get this amazing memorization. We make and throw a lot of things like an epoxy resin, which will work like amber. We throw a lot of materials in conditions where the lack of oxygen is, so you can slow down. One can guess (there will be) the wonderful and exceptional memorization here and there will happen due to the circumstances we produced completely by chance.
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