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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

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Many science museums contain fossils,^{[citation needed]} which are often reconstructed into full skeletons.

In the comic, life-forms of the future have discovered the reconstructed fossils from our museums and misidentified them as coming from actual dinosaurs living now, and have thus concluded that these dinosaurs survived the asteroid impact that in fact made them extinct. The Cenozoic, which began after that impact around 66 million years ago, is Earth's current geologic era, while the Cretaceous was the final geologic period of the previous era, the Mesozoic.

The title text says that a high amount of resin and human DNA has led to them theorizing that dinosaurs ate humans. Much more likely, the resin and human DNA have mixed as a result of the molding and casting process used to recreate missing or damaged bones — usually so that complete-looking skeletons can be displayed.

A similar museum, misunderstood by people instead of alien beings, 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 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.

Trivia

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

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