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January 7, 2020 07:00 am

What Fossils Will Modern-Day Civilization Leave Behind?

sciencehabit writes: Millions of years from now, advanced humans -- or perhaps visiting aliens -- may dig up the remnants of today's civilizations. What are they likely to find, and how will they interpret our relationship with the creatures around us? A new study reveals that archaeologists will need to rely on bones, not any of our former technology. "If you read a lot of postapocalyptic science fiction, one of the things that disappears in almost all cases is written records, computer records, things like that," says one of the scientists. "There are computer records and code from decades ago that modern computers can't recognize because it's so far out of alignment. So imagine two million years from now... So what are we left with? It's whatever is buried in the ground." And what will that be? Well, lots of humans, cows, and chickens. And, of course, tons of cats and dogs. "Of all the animals, dogs and cats are more likely to be buried in a manner similar to people," says another scientist. "There are pet cemeteries that are set up similar to human memorial parks. So if anything like that is stumbled upon, that's going to say something different than a pit that people threw a bunch of pigs into randomly. I think it's going to be obvious that we felt differently about dogs and cats versus pigs and cows and chickens."

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