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Originally Posted by gopher65
If I had to guess, I would say that if every human died today in 2 or 3 million years there would be no significant evidence of our existence..... with the possible exception of a few individuals who fell into tar pits or lake beds and were fossilized. Metal rusts, stone breaks, trees rot, plastic biodegrades, and even used putonium will eventually decay into lead. Nothing would be left for anyone to find
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There are more than 6 billion humans alive today. We have found remains of hominids and their tools from a couple million years ago, when their population can only have been a tiny fraction of the current human population. Also, in at least a few places--- the large cities of the world--- we have completely altered the land, down to the very bedrock. In two million years, there may not be anything on the surface that's immediately recognizable as manmade, but there will be plenty of evidence that an archaeologist could interpret.
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Originally Posted by Samara
How would dinosaurs communicate? Their mouths don't seem developed enough to form actual speech (I'm not an expert on such things, I'm merely looking at it from a layperson's view) Unless they used honkings or hoots. But that makes no sense, because there are only so many types of honks or hoots one can make.
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Honks and hoots would be quite sufficient. If the dinosaurs recognized eight different pitches, two durations, and three overtones, that would give them 48 distinct sounds, which is more than the number of phonemes in English.
I read recently that chickadee communication was found to be more complex than anyone had thought, because there are subtle modulations in the calls that humans can't hear but the birds can distinguish just fine. If you think about it, human speech is the same way. Compared to the full range of possible sounds, human vowels are all very similar to one another, and the same is true of consonants. To an intelligent dinosaur, the Gettysburg Address would sound like
quack quack quack quack quack.