Re: mass extinctions and DDT

[Nick Longrich <longrich@alumni.princeton.edu>]

> Hi all,
>
> An old question I would like to reintroduce:
>
> "If human beings were to become extinct in the next 500 years due to 
> global warming, pestilence or other catastrophy, what if anything 
> would remain of our civilization to reveal us to the next 
> superspecies, 65 million years from now?"

Sounds like you've been watching "The Planet of the Apes" a lot.
	Its an interesting question- the reshuffling of biogeography 
would be the biggest biotic impact. We'd probably leave a lot of 
other traces. 2 x 4s, plywood, particle board, shipwrecks, telephone 
poles and shingles would preserve as coalified and silicified wood. 
Cinder blocks, bricks, concrete hunks of skyscraper, old chunks of 
freeway would preserve pretty much as they were. Glass- windows, 
beads, bottles, old telephone insulators, obsidian arrowheads- would 
remain, as would ceramics: pottery shards, broken dishes, roofing 
tiles, bathroom tiles, teapots, sinks, bathtubs. Offhand I'd guess 
that in the right chemical conditions, metals and plastics would also 
preserve. Not to mention that small but probably detectable levels of 
chemical residue would remain in the sediments- things like 
industrial by-products, fossil fuel residues, heavy metals, fallout 
from all those H-bomb tests over the years. Finally, ourselves- since 
we tend to bury ourselves, that gives us a big headstart on entering 
the fossil record. It might not be that abundant after 65 million 
years, but some of it would enter the geological record, and it would 
be pretty hard for a geologist to ignore this kind of stuff- 
conglomerates made of cinderblocks and the like.
	The thought of future paleontologists yelling at each other 
over the proper system of taxonomy for coke bottles and toilet bowls 
is just hilarious.


Nick


"Oh I was wrong/It was Earth all along/You've finally made a monkey out of 
me!"
-Planet of the Apes: The Musical; as featured on The Simpsons