When we're gone and the next organized evolved sentient species looks back into the fossil record…

[MrScorpio]

I wonder what they'll think of us.

It probably won't be too favorable an opinion.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. I dunno--it's our environmental disasters that will

have cleared the way for their evolution. Like it took the extinction of the dinosaurs (& a whole lot of other species) to create Lebensraum for the mammals.

The two main differences with the dinosaur analogy are, first, that we will have fallen due to our own environmental impact, not requiring a meteor fall to end us, and we will have taken a lot more species with us than the meteor did.

I'm betting the cockroaches will make it, though. And God knows what they might evolve into in a few tens of millions of years.

[demwing]

3. "God knows what they might evolve into"

Greys?

What ever they are, they won't begrudge us the environment, because whatever we do that kills us off also makes way for them.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. they'll be grateful for our foolishness

[demwing]

2. That depends on what about us survives us.

Those human reminders that are the least complementary are often also the most superficial and temporary.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. My guess is they'll find a lot of reinforced concrete

and an obvious mass extinction, with an explosion of humans and farm/domesticated animals just before it. Which won't look great.

[OldDem2012]

6. Give it a couple of million years and a few ice ages where glaciers grind everything to dust...

....and there will be very little remaining, if anything, of the human infection left in the historical record. Rust and other geologic processes will take care of the rest.

We'll be very lucky if we've found other worlds to exploit by the time we're eradicated from this one.

Heck, we're lucky to find a few bones of dinosaurs and we still don't know exactly how they looked.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. Yup--after all, think of how little evidence remains

of Atlantis!

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. At the speed evolution works

Not much...it took quite a while for us to understand dinosaurs...and it is mostly academic interest. I suspect a similar affair.

One more piece of data, from the record...a single species has an average 100,000 years on the stage...and humans are still evolving into the next thing.

[Jackpine Radical]

9. We may not be the ancestors of "the next thing."

This naked ape thing may be playing itself out into an evolutionary dead end.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. that. might very well

Be the case

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. They'll probably use us as fairytale bogeymen to scare their kids.

[talkingmime]

11. They'll be confused trying to figure out what all the cell phones and iGadgets were for.