It was quite common in popular culture well before Jurassic Park. Try the early 1970s.

Plus it was common shorthand when I was learning paleontology back in the 1950s.

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Check out the ruins of and human remains in Pompeii and Herculaneum, two of the most civilized cities in the ancient world, and based on their architecture and artwork, which contained some of the most well-educated, if not most intelligent. These might not qualify as "fossils" per se, but if the pyroclastic flow had been mostly mud instead of ash, they certainly would have wound up as such.

Animals don't have to be stupid to get fossilized. They die where they die. If it happens to be in areas which are routinely covered by layers of mud, which then go through a sedimentary rock formation cycle, you get some fossils.

I expect that the areas in and around New Orleans over the next tens of thousands of years, or however long it takes the Mississippi mud to become sandstone, will yield some very nice homo sapiens sapiens fossils.

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Agreed. It's kind of fun trying to communicate with the ghosts of the past.

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

So W.F. Tomba doesn't mind "T-Rex" but hates "hunter-gatherer"?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Here ya go:

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

A high-tech dinosaur civilisation is the subject of Barry B. Longyear's novel The Homecoming.

So it's been done.

I read the short story the novel is based on, and IIRC most archaeological evidence, and the dino civilisation on Earth, was destroyed by a war, using weapons more powerful then nukes.

__________________
Join the Illuminati

Thank you.

Hmm, I've seen the show, I don't know that I'd call them all that civilized.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort