Main Page

Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 2990 xkcd comics, and only 9 (0%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!

Latest comic

Go to this comic explanation

|< < Prev Comic #2990 (September 25, 2024)

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

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a ONCE-DOMINANT BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.

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 remained being dug up and assembled into complete skeletons, which are frequently put on display in museums and other facilities.

This comic posits a distant future in which the remains of current civilization become buried in sediment. Presumably, this involves humanity either going extinct or losing our dominance over the planet. In this context, life-forms of the future (either aliens or earth organisms that have become unrecognizable) have apparently discovered the reconstructed fossils in the ruins of our museums and presumed that they died in our geological era.

The title of the strip refers to the Cenozoic era, which is the current geological era, so the "the late Cenozoic" is right now, the time in which humans live. The strip also refers to the Cretaceous period, which is the last period of the Mesozoic era, and the last era in which dinosaurs lived. The joke being that, in the distant future, our current era would be studied in the same way that we study ancient geological eras.

The confusion over which era originated dinosaur fossils would present a timeline problem. Dinosaur fossils would presumably be found in layers from the Cretaceous period (ending 66 million years ago), but a significant number of them would also be found in layers from the late Cenozoic (starting no earlier than a hundred years ago, but probably to depend upon when current society breaks down and allows natural sedimentation or debris to build up over the relevent displays), but not in any layers in between. Instead of realizing that these fossils had been dug up, relocated, and reconstructed, the future paleontologists conclude that a small number of these dinosaurs survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event lived in small numbers for tens of millions of years, leaving no fossil record, but the once again flourished, leaving complete fossils in our era. This is, of course, laughably wrong based on our knowledge, but future scientists who didn't understand human civilization might consider it to be the most obvious explanation for such apparently contradictory information.

The title text says that a high amount of resin and human DNA has led to them theorizing that dinosaurs ate humans. When reconstructing fossils, resin is often used to recreate missing or incomplete bones, and for 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.

Dinosaurs, particularly velociraptors, eating humans is a recurring fear of Randall's.

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 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.

Is this out of date? .

New here?

Last 7 days (Top 10)

Rank Score Pages Changes Username 1 161 148 193 Charlie Spring 2 21 17 21 TheusafBOT 3 14 11 13 Asdf 4 12 12 12 Anonymous64 5 10 6 10 DKMell 6 8 6 7 ConscriptGlossary 7 8 4 8 Barry Margolin 8 7 4 7 Kynde 9 6 3 5 RadiantRainwing 10 5 3 4 1234231587678

Lots of people contribute to make this wiki a success. Many of the recent contributors, listed above, have just joined. You can do it too! Create your account here.

You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to sign up for an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for comics, characters, themes and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd web comic, it should be here.

• If you're new to wiki editing, see the explain xkcd:Editor FAQ for a specific guidance to this Wiki and the more general help on how to edit wiki pages. There's also a handy wikicode cheatsheet.

• Discussion about the wiki itself happens at the Community portal.

• You can browse the comics from List of all comics or by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.

• There are incomplete explanations listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!

Rules

Don't be a jerk!

There are a lot of comics that don't have set-in-stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.

If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.

Please only submit material directly related to (and helping everyone better understand) xkcd... and of course only submit material that can legally be posted (and freely edited). Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.

If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.