Although humanity has extracted countless fossils from the Earth—traces of Earth's history spanning 4.5 billion years that provide clear and vivid evidence of how ancient species of living organisms existed long before we did—the question scientists are asking nowadays is: if we were to go extinct and other intelligent beings were to appear millions of years later, would they know we ever existed? Or could they understand what our civilization was like?
Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester in the United States, says: "We cannot rely on future paleontologists finding our fossils." He explains: "A very small fraction of life on Earth turns into fossils, especially if a civilization only lasted for a short geological period."
A research paper published in 2018, for which Professor Frank was a co-author, indicates that although dinosaurs existed on Earth for 165 million years, only a relatively small number of nearly complete dinosaur fossils have been found. Therefore, the paper suggests that, considering our human species has only existed for about 300,000 years so far, we might not leave any significant trace in the fossil record at all.
