2990: Late Cenozoic

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Late Cenozoic

Title text: Our nucleic acid recovery techinques found a great deal of homo sapiens DNA incorporated into the fossils, particularly the ones containing high levels of resin, leading to the theory that these dinosaurs preyed on the once-dominant primates.

Explanation

A major part of understanding how life-forms existed and operated in the past involves finding fossilized remains, and working out a timeline of when they lived, based on the sediment layers in which they were found (among other factors). Modern paleontology has resulted in many of these fossilized remains being dug up and assembled into complete skeletons, which are frequently put on display in museums and other facilities.

This comic posits a future in which the remains of current civilization become buried in sediment, likely as a result of humanity going extinct so as to allow the premise of this comic to occur. Modern science estimates nearly all human-made activity - glass, concrete, steel - would erase to nothing within at most 1000 years (see Life After People and The World Without Us), meaning that any future life-forms, extraterrestrial or evolved modern-day species, would be hard pressed to find anything that suggested this planet used to be inhabited save for some microplastics, nuclear waste and - in this scenario - preserved dinosaur bones, apparently.

While a question may arise as to why exactly no dinosaur fossils can be found in the intervening ~66 million years (which we know is because they went extinct and later ones were actually dug up by a different species), the real-life fossil record is quite sporadic, meaning such gaps should not be seen as unusual (these gaps are termed Lazarus taxons).

The title of the strip refers to the Cenozoic era, which is the current geological era. The term "late Cenozoic" implies some geological change would occur significant enough to warrant designating a new era ; either these changes led to the end of human civilization or are in fact spurred by them.

The title text says that a high amount of resin and human DNA found in these fossils led to them theorizing dinosaurs ate humans. When reconstructing fossils, resin is often used to recreate missing or incomplete bones amongst other purposes in assembling and displaying a "complete" skeleton. Since this resin is made and mixed by humans,^{[citation needed]} incidental human DNA sources (such as cast off skin cells and hair) almost certainly get mixed in, leading to this misconception.

A similar museum, misunderstood by humans instead of this other species, is depicted in 2760: Paleontology Museum.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[Three squid-like aliens in a classroom; one alien stands in front of a board covered with minute text and a drawing of a T-Rex skeleton. Two aliens sit on stools watching the teacher alien. The teacher alien on the left is on a raised platform and points at the board with one tentacle.]

Left alien: Species such as triceratops and tyrannosaurus became more rare after the Cretaceous, but they survived to flourish in the late Cenozoic, 66 million years later.

Left alien: Many complete skeletons have been discovered from this era.

[Caption below the panel:]

It's going to be really funny when our museums get buried in sediment.

Trivia

The title text has a typo: "techinques" should be "techniques".

The future beings are presumably ones that took over the far future of the Earth long after the extinction of humans. They are possibly descendents of one or other of the cephalopods, species widely noted for their intelligence even today, but also bear a passing resemblence to the 'contemporary' alien life-forms that Randall uses for comics set in the current era.

Their relationship with his other beings from the future, seen occasionally, is uncertain. That other form may merely be an 'avatar' presence, made necessary by the time-travel (or visitation) method in use, or else a representative from a predominantly non-biological era of the future.

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Discussion

first explanation, probably bad Sci09273.15 (talk) 19:41, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

It's a fine starting point. Welcome! Barmar (talk) 19:51, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

It would have been so cute if Randall had given the lecturer alien some features of Miss Lenhart. Barmar (talk) 19:53, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Luckily for future paleontologists, our infrastructure and earthmoving projects are sturdy enough that they should still look kinda funny in a hundred million years. They might not assume that there was a technological civilization until they identified the Manhattan Iron Deposits as ancient vehicles or found similar proof, but they would know SOMETHING weird was going on. GreatWyrmGold (talk) 21:38, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Researchers have successfully detected and reconstructed the foundations of mud huts, and track down the fossilized trash heaps of humans and animals. Hard for me to imagine a circumstance in which the fossil exhibits of the AMNH (to name one) were preserved largely intact, that did not also preserve the AMNH itself in a recognizable form. The aliens might then be left to meditate on how a civilization that could create an AMNH fell over. 172.71.150.196 15:31, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

The gap in the fossil record between their extinction and sudden resurgence will be explained by a chance discovery of a prestine copy of the documentary Jurassic Park. 172.69.208.183 23:50, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Hey, I made this same exact joke (offline) over 20 years ago! I believe that means I am entitled to compensation. 183231bcb (talk) 01:39, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

-Thinking emoji- pretty sure the typical museum dino skeleton is 100% fossil free. I might recall the dino (and similar rareness of fossils) skeletons on display as cast plaster (of paris?). SDT 172.70.38.17 03:04, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

As usual, the answer to the question "how much of a displayed dinosaur skeleton is composed of authentic fossil bones" is "it depends". See this article from Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History for intel. 172.71.147.146 05:30, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

I would be willing to suffer the fate of Tithonus for a chance to see those aliens try to figure out the Cenozoic biogeography of Hawai‘i - where, for instance, the (presumably fossilized remains of the) backyard birds would include, inter alia, the northern cardinal (North America), the Java finch (Indonesia), the saffron finch (Brazil), the English sparrow (western Europe), the zebra dove (Malaysia), the warbling white-eye (Japan), the common waxbill (South Africa), the common myna (India) ... 172.68.23.151 05:58, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

I love the fact that we have a perfectly reasonable five sentence, three paragraph explanation with 5x as much text here on the talk page, especially after the disaster with Monday's (the previous) comic. 162.158.90.24 07:22, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Haven't counted the sentences, but it's now four paragraphs. That's with a single (rendering-ignored) line-feed having been made into two (forcing a paragraph-break), when maybe someone should have contracted it instead.

I just extracted a rather spaghetti-like inclusion of the nature(s?) of the future-beings from the flow, to streamline it. Readded that (further expounded, now with a bit of excusable elbow-room) as Trivia, to retain the speculative nature of that interesting but incidental bit of analysis. Hope this works for people. 172.71.26.37 10:36, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Must have been nice while it lasted. "Dinosaurs, particularly velociraptors, eating humans is a recurring fear of Randall's." Good grief. 172.70.207.42 17:23, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Should we make a category for comics including these alien guys? 172.71.155.35 16:59, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

This has an amusing (to me) parallel with the Young Earth Creationist "theory" that a malevolent power arranged fossils in the geologic record in such a way as to lead scientists to conclude that life has been here for hundreds of millions of years, thereby leading them away from God. In this case, our paleontologists and museum curators are that malevolent power. (There's also a "theory" that the Great Flood resulted in sorting the fossil record in that way, not malevolently, but as a function of density and hydrodynamics....)162.158.62.245 18:44, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Deus Creatus does lots of strange things. Kinda like the beings that created it. 108.162.246.5 19:19, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

My theory: If there's a Creator, then He values logic. He may have created Earth as per YEC's thoughts on 6,000 years or so ago (or last Tuesday, or even five minutes ago!) but He was also the one who planted all the fossils (and light 'arriving' from the early universe, and perhaps all the scientific literature and other details that predates you having been blinked into existence, all your faked memories fully formed).

This is His test. If you decide that the world was Created, based only upon one or other imperfect religious text (that He also created, with all their deliberate flaws and contradictions), then you have failed. If you instead examine the perfectly crafted scientific evidence (with its perfectly intentional limitations left open to further critical thinking) and decide that it is a much more useful worldview, and seek to find out more from the (faked, but perfectly so) world of wonder out there, then you are blessed.

Though actually believing in this God Of Logic is not what He wants. Feel free to theorise about him, but you can never find any proof of Him because He never left any. All those false trails to various other deities, to catch the insufficiently thoughtful out, but the 'true' mysteries of the universe are the only ones you should pay attention to. And, through His omnipotence, He has left so many logical 'facts' and measurements for you to find and appreciate.

...this explains all observable data, but of course is unproven. Naturally, I don't say that it's true. I would instead preach that you look around and make your own mind up. Which is something that more people could try doing. And there's no reason why GOL would not want you to do this. 172.70.86.206 20:30, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

The biggest problem with this edition is that it names genera but speaks of species. Re earlier comments, please spell "pristine" correctly. There has actually been found altered soft tissue, but not DNA as such. Indeed some museum displays are 100% casts, others vary in the amount of original material. My first thought re human DNA was just from visitors coughing, sneezing, and touching but resin prep seems plausible. -- Anthonyeleven (talk) 21:19, 26 September 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I'm no expert, but firstly, I would think the fossils keep aging even once unearthed, so that analysis would reveal their actual age, not placing them at modern day (despite what burial depth they were found) and would be more upright than the originals. Secondly, don't museums use things to hold the skeletons in place? Like metal frames? Wouldn't those be present and evident as well, revealing that these skeletons were being held together artificially? Thirdly, with Hallowe'en NEXT month I would think a comic about dinosaur skeletons would have been better NEXT week or later, :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 06:55, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Those bits of 'fossil' that are not (modern) plaster/resin/etc would tend to be rock (exact details variable, as endocasting, ichnofossilisation and permineralisation are just three ways among many of generating a recognisable fossil from remains). You'd have to do isotope self-replacement analysis to establish the differential between the presumed 'native' strata and the material of the 'bone's. Complicated by the post-WW2 isotope 'blips' (and, if applicable, post-WW3+ and/or cosmic-sourced irradiations from within or beyond humanity's further future).

Uprightness would depend upon how the museum (itself perhaps significantly made of stone formed prior to the holocene, which might or might not be correctly established) maybe collapsed upon its exhibits. Which <blob-and-tentacle>kind's paleoarchitects may or may not be able to disentangle. Ditto (or, rather, correctly leave entangled) the wires, brackets and supporting props of all kinds, possibly distinguishable from the roof-work/light fittings superimposed upon the dinosaur skeleton.

In various ways, I'm assuming far enough in the future to make thesevkinds of clues less trivially obvious, at least to the level of paleological understanding these blobs seem to have. In others (the detection of actual H. Sapiens DNA traces, but seemingly not so advanced to wonder about the comparative lack of DNA in the 'twice buried' skeletons), maybe not so far ahead. Unless their science is so good in some areas (rescue of trace DNA well beyond what we're currently capable of) but with relatively inexplicable gaps (reasonable analysis of the degradations it suffers through both time and circumstances) that N-years-ago vs. (N+65million+more)-years-ago is an apparently insignificant chronological departure.

Or so I might suggest, for starters, if I were overanalytical about the comic. ;) 172.70.90.34 13:47, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

In the 1920s, archeologists dug up the 2500 year old museum of Ennigaldi-Nanna (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennigaldi-Nanna%27s_museum). Apparently this was actually very confusing, until they noticed the labels. 172.69.214.109 (talk) 13:27, 30 September 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

...a hint to that editor (above and beyond the one to sign), and others. Use the {{w}}-template for wikilinks. Actual active examples abound, as it's probably one of the more commonly used templates in explainxkcd pages, but you could have used {{w|Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum}} to give: Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum ... 162.158.74.119 21:16, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Why is the explanation SO LONG and BARELY RELEVANT?!? 162.158.41.229

Depends which bits you think aren't relevant. Someone thinks it's relevant that fossils can be found beyond their original era. Something thinks it's relevant that humans are probably imminently extinct. Someone thinks it's relevent to actually explain how stratological timelines are established in the first place. You could always remove something that you think isn't supposed to be there (but, equally, it's likely that someone else thought that it should be, and others may agree, disagree or not mind either way).

Sentiment appreciated, but it's like "there's too many instances of a certain letter", without even hinting which one it is you dislike. 172.68.205.165 12:08, 1 October 2024 (UTC)