How long will traces of our civilisation last?

What will remain of us hundreds of millions of years from now? And how can we be so certain that we are the first technologically advanced species on Earth?

These unsettling questions have been haunting listener Steve. If fossils can be lost to deep time through erosion and subduction into the Earth’s mantle, how would anyone — or anything — ever know that we had been here? And if an earlier species had built a civilization that rose and fell, would we even be able to find traces of it?

To investigate, CrowdScience presenter Caroline Steel speaks...