Discarded: How Technofossils Will Be Our Ultimate Legacy

University of Leicester colleagues Gabbott (paleontology) and Zalasiewicz (geology; The Earth After Us) ponder which components of our physical culture will survive as fossils for future paleontologists to find and decipher. Armed with knowledge of how different long-buried objects have been fossilized or otherwise preserved, as well as contemporary material science and engineering, the authors speculate on the fates of clothing, building materials, electronics, infrastructure, and even human waste millions of years into the future. If we are living in a new era, the Anthropocene, where the major force in changing the planet is human activity, what trace will all of this transformation leave in the earth? And will rapid technological development, so far only a nanosecond of geological time, last long enough to leave an indelible (even if not intelligible) mark in the geologic record? Or will civilization collapse as quickly as it rose? In contrast to Zalesiewicz’s previous book, this work is light on environmental polemicizing, with enough geology to understand but not overwhelm.