On 01/01/2018 16:09, Eric Flesch wrote:
On 31 Dec 2017, Phillip Helbig wrote:
... Could an intelligent but non-technological
species at a level of intelligence similar to humans have arisen
sometime in the past but left no fossil or other record?

About 40 years ago the "Planetary Report" magazine carried an article
about how, about a million years before the dinosaurs vanished, a new
human-sized upright-walking dinosaur appeared with stereoscopic vision
(I don't have the exact reference, sorry). When reading it, I

Sounds like one of the T. Rex walks like a kangaroo claims from before
the time when they realised that it used its tail for balance and walked
more like a modern day bird with a long tail (eg pheasant). Footprint
tracks show no signs of it dragging its tail like a kangaroo would...

couldn't help but wonder if they'd built a civilization and then
immolated themselves -- that would thus be the true cause of the
dinosaurs' disappearance. That may sound absurd, but if we vanished
tomorrow, what trace of our civilization would survive 66 million
years later? Not a nail.

I suspect slabs of refined gold in bulk storage repositories and nuclear
waste would easily survive for that long in a form where they would be
easily recognisable as technological artefacts. Some of the better
grades of stainless steel might also last that long once covered by mud.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown