Description: Discarded tells the story of the fossils we will leave as relics into the far future. It explores how the things we now so abundantly produce and discard ^—^ plastic bottles, mobile phones, concrete flyways, chicken bones, aluminium cans and many more ^—^ might alter with burial and petrify, to become future geology.
Review Quotes: "An imaginative, vivid story of how human civilisation might be viewed in the future. Gabbott and Zalasiewicz explore how our plastics, concrete, cars, power plants, clothes, chickens and toxic chemicals, what they call 'technofossils, ' will survive the millennia. Using thorough application of science, they argue a case for what we leave behind and what some future intelligent species might make of us. Sobering, but thought-provoking." -- Micheal J. Benton, Author of Extinctions: How Life Survives, Adapts and Evolves
"A look back, from the far future, at the things we've made lately that are going to outlast us and then some. Written with scientist's eyes and storyteller's pens, this is the postmortem you'll want to read, to savor the horror of the side-effects of our most productive technology." -- Marc Abrahams, Editor of Annals of Improbable Research"Discarded is sobering, but engagingly written...if you fancyy ourself as a writer of science fiction and want to create a post-human world, this book could prove a terrific resource." -- Chris Simms, New Scientist"clear, flowing prose that avoids academic jargon and is packed with fascinating, shocking, [and] amusing facts ... This book [shows] that human influence stretches far into the future, leaving a permanent mark in the geological record and entering the realm of deep time." -- Marek Narkiewicz, KSIrA: ZKI