IFLScience The Big Questions: What Will The Fossils Of The Future Look Like?

And what will they say about humanity long after we’re gone?

The Big Questions: What Will The Fossils Of The Future Look Like? — One person's trash could be a future person's fossil.
Image credit: Tom Meaker/Shutterstock.com; modified by IFLScience

Today’s rubbish may well be the fossils of tomorrow. Plastic bags, old pens, cheap clothing, or even chicken bones are all examples of possible “technofossils”, rapidly accumulating debris and detritus that may come to represent the story of humanity in the geological record long after we’re gone.

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But it doesn’t have to be this way. Host Dr Russell Moul speaks to Professors Sarah Gabbott and Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester, authors of Discarded: How Technofossils Will be Our Ultimate Legacy, about the fascinating processes involved in turning our trash into fossils, but also how interest in these processes may help us change them.

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