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

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Many science museums contain fossils, which are often reconstructed into full skeletons. In the comic, beings (possibly aliens) in the future have discovered the reconstructed fossils from our museums and misidentified them as coming from actual dinosaurs living at the time, and have thus concluded that these dinosaurs survived until now.

The title text says that a high amount of resin and human DNA has led to them theorizing that dinosaurs ate humans.

Transcript

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[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 chairs watching the teacher alien. The teacher alien on the left sits on a table and points at the board with one tentacle. The image is encapsulated in a box, and there is a caption beneath it.]

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 beneath 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".

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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.