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Far in the future, such anthroturbation will look similar to marks from magma oozing through or around other rocks deep underground—known to geologists as igneous intrusions—and it will last as long. "As these traces are made well below the reach of erosion, many will last over geological timescales: for millions of years or even hundreds of millions of years," Zalasiewicz adds. "Some, I would guess, will remain for as long as there is a planet Earth."

Geologist Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester in England, is the lead author of the new paper, published July 24 in the journal Anthropocene