Editing 3088: Deposition

{{comic
| number    = 3088
| date      = May 12, 2025
| title     = Deposition
| image     = deposition_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x272px
| noexpand  = true
| titletext = P.S. If you have time travel, come to my birthday party Saturday!
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by BEDROCK INSPECTOR NO 4. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
A {{w|continental margin}} is the place on the edge of a continent where the {{w|continental crust}} is underwater, covered by relatively shallow coastal waters. The scene is ambiguous, but it is feasible that Ponytail is stood on the back-shore {{w|littoral zone}} ''next'' to the rivermouth, such that she is actually {{tvtropes|LamePunReaction|a stone's throw}} away from the sea. As such, the stones she throws off to the right end up embedded directly into the soft shoreline/sediments without having to risk further erosion from all the other stones and gravel also sitting in the riverbed or being tumbled down it.

The continental margin is said to be {{w|passive margin|passive}}, which means that it is not currently undergoing {{w|subduction}}, where the oceanic crust slips under the continental crust, or a {{w|strike-slip fault}}, where one slides along the other, both of which can mechanically or thermally transform any seafloor material. Absent such occurrences, this causes piles of {{w|sediment}} to {{w|River delta#Formation|accumulate}} on the {{w|continental shelf}} with a minimum of additional geological disturbance.

This rock's eventual resting place in the sediment seems destined to be compressed by further overlying sedimentation and solidify over geologic timescales into {{w|shale}} or other similar sedimentary rock types, presuming that the future movement of further sediment and relative local changes of sea-level and shoreline keep adding more material. As shown, 100 million years later the sea level has gone down (and/or the bedrock has risen), re-exposing the strata, and recent erosion/quarrying has caused it to become a cliff face that eventually re-exposes the original rock that Ponytail threw into the river, apparently just at the right time and place to be discovered or uncovered by [[2990: Late Cenozoic|aliens/far-future-earthlings]].

These beings appear to be digging with relatively primitive hand-tools that are strangely anthropocentric, given the apparent use of antigravity personal conveyors with mechanical manipulators, and have found a rock. Whether or not they fully comprehend it, this seems to be one of those left with a still visible carved message by Ponytail, saying "This bedrock inspected by No. 5". This is a parody of a typical {{w|quality control}} label left attached to (or hidden within) clothing, to reassure any purchaser and/or help identify which manufacturing and inspection path any newly discovered {{w|product defect}} had passed through.

In the title text, Ponytail suggests that the aliens/future-earth-based-lifeforms may have access to {{w|time travel}} technology, and invites them to her birthday party (next) Saturday, which suggests that the "inspected by" message is just one of several different speculative statements engraved on any particular stone. The invitational one does not seem to give an indication ''which'' Saturday is meant so, even if the finders would be able to time travel, it might still not be trivial for them to attend the birthday party. This also presupposes that the future discoverers have no trouble reading the invite, both remaining legible and not requiring impractical levels of translation from 'ancient English'.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

:[Cueball approaches Ponytail, chiselling a rock on a shoreline next to a river with shallow rolling hills in the background]
:Cueball: What are you doing?
:Ponytail: This river empties onto a passive continental margin.

:[Cueball and Ponytail stand talking, Ponytail holding several flat rocks, in an otherwise empty and frameless panel]
:Ponytail: If I chisel notes onto these rocks and throw them into the sea, they might be incorporated into some shale cliff in the distant future.

:[Silhouetted scene of Ponytail as she throws multiple rocks off frame to the right, Cueball watching from behind her]
:[From off-panel, sound effect of a rock hitting water:] PLOP

:[Two 'bug-eyed aliens', sitting in personal 'hover-saucers' look rightwards at an exposed rock-face. A pick and shovel are left stuck in the ground, and one of the 'saucers' sports a mechanical arm currently holding a loose fragment of rock. There are three question marks above the alien on the left and two question marks next to the alien on the right]
:[Panel label:] 100 million years later...
:[Text originating from the held rock fragment:] This bedrock inspected by No. 5

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Aliens]]<!-- or future-earthlings! -->
[[Category:Time travel]]