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Comment by acobster | Hacker News Reader

Wondering about this as well. INAG, but I think fossils are extremely rare relative to population. And things like wedding rings will have disintegrated after just a few million years. But still, you'd think some of them would survive under conditions similar to those that preserved dino skeletons?

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That was my thinking as well, though apparently geologists are pretty pessimistic about both the survival of human artifacts and the probability that someone would find the rare oddballs that did survive.

Plus, it’s possible that some hypothetical dino civilization mastered bio-degradable materials early on before taking to the stars ;-)

and settled the ...delta quadrant it was iirc? :)

Just a misread of the data by a well-intentioned scientist and some meddling humans.

And now they're back, to reclaim what was once theirs.

Invasion of the Space Dinos!

Also reminiscent of an episode of Voyager where dinosaurs had evolved on earth millions of years before humans and started exploring space.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Distant_Origin_(episode)

That is more-or-less the plot of more than one episode of Dr Who:

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Dinosaurs_on_a_Spaceship_(TV_st...

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Silurian

"Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" was mildly disappointing given the amazing ridiculousness of the title, but "The Hungry Earth" / "Cold Blood" is a top-notch two-part episode. It feels so authentically human in both the highs and the lows.

How optimistic are geologists regarding the survival of bones? Or small insects?

They discuss that in the article. Essentially everything would be turned asunder by the changing of the earths crust. The oldest part of the earths crust is something like 1.7 million years.

> The oldest part of the earths crust is something like 1.7 million years.

Wasn't the article more meaning "the oldest part of the earths crust, that's still on the surface"?

eg everything else has been buried, or destroyed, via other geological processes

If I'm not mistaken, Greenland has crust from over 3 billion years ago. 1.7 million years ago is nothing, I don't know where you got that number from but it is wrong.

As does much of northern Canada. However, the ancient rock, billions of old as it may be, wasn't surface rock 1.7 million years ago. It's only been surfaced since through erosion.

The article.

“For example, the oldest large-scale stretch of ancient surface lies in the Negev Desert. It’s “just” 1.8 million years old—older surfaces are mostly visible in cross section via something like a cliff face or rock cuts. Go back much farther than the Quaternary and everything has been turned over and crushed to dust.”

The article refers to ancient surface, as in, the oldest place that we can find that has continuously been an exposed surface. The take away is that most areas don't remain stable at the surface, either they erode away, or get buried via sedimentation.

The article is in no way stating the oldest bit of the Earth's crust is 1.8 million years old. Crust has a specific meaning, the chemically differentiated rocks at the surface i.e. everything but the very very rare bits of exposed mantle. Oldest oceanic crust is <200 Ma, oldest continental crust dates to the Hadean (4.4 Ga, if you set the bar at only zircons).

All comments in a thread based on an article should be read in that context. Unless, of course, the links are never followed and we’re just here to massage each other’s preconceptions.

Then how would we have dinosaur bones from 65 million years ago +?

Fossils represent a very tiny portion of whatever was there at that time.

Yes, but the point is the 1.7 M number for total crust turnover can't be valid, as none of that tiny portion would still exist.

I find it hard to believe that there won't be at least some human fossils lying around 60 million years from now.

It’s an angle that a funeral directors could use as a selling point - Fossilisation.

In Gene Wolfe's SF/fantasy tetralogy The Book of the New Sun, set very far in the future, he refers to corpses preserved by extreme means and rendered essentially indestructible and basically just cluttering up the world.

see Ancient Egypt

We don't have bones, we have fossils.

Fossilized bones (plus the occasional feather/tissue), and way to miss the point.

Not trying to be pedantic but the devil is in the details.

Bones are common, fossils are formed by a relatively rare geologic process. Fossilization supplants slow to rot organic material with stone, embedding it in the strata, in just the right conditions. It's unclear to me what (if any) industrial rememants would become fossilized and if they'd be recognizable as such.

Given that pillow lavas can be recognised in some eclogite facies rocks, I think a porcelain toilet would stand a good chance of remaining recognisable at all the way to granulite or eclogite facies, as long as it is not too deformed.

Pyramids? Statues? Stuff that is already made of stone to start with?

How long has it taken the pyramids to decay to their current status?

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