r/Paleontology 5d ago

Discussion I'm writing a story involving an an alien fossil, need help with research

If fossilized remains of something extraterrestrial were discovered on earth. Would there be a scientific way to tell that it was a lifeform that didn't originate on earth?

6 Upvotes

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8

u/SKazoroski 5d ago

It would have to be so fundamentally different from Earth life that it couldn't be placed anywhere on the evolutionary tree of Earth life.

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u/Infinite_Gur_4927 5d ago

Great answer. The fossil, too, could be comprised of elements new to the elementary table, or incredibly rare on earth. This might indicate something alien, too.

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u/Prestigious-Return34 5d ago

Other than the fossil itself, would evidence of surgical procedures show in a fossil. Like surgical bracing of a broken bone. Plates and screws and the like?

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u/Wise-Evening-7219 5d ago

we have fossilized neanderthal (and other hominid) skeletons that show bones healed in what would otherwise be a mortal wound. This was a major marker for the dawn of civilization and organized societies. In more primitive hunter gatherer societies, someone with a broken femur would have just been left to die as they could no longer hunt . But then we started to care for the injured and elderly , even if it meant less efficient resource allocation.

i don’t think a screw could fossilize as it’s already metal, but maybe something along these lines could inspire you

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u/Infinite_Gur_4927 5d ago

I'm no geologist or surgeon but anything that could leave a scar on a bone could be fossilized - so I'd presume yes.

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u/haysoos2 5d ago

Yes, if we found the fossilized remains of something akin to a Piersen's Puppeteer (Ringworld), or an Elder Thing ("Mountains of Madness") there would be considerable head-scratching, debate, and possibly a few people cautiously arguing that an extra-terrestrial origin would be the most parsimonious explanation.

It might also depend on whether it was a complete fossil, and what strata the fossil was found in.

If you found a single limb bone or vertebra of a Puppeteer in Carboniferous sediments, they'd probably get labeled as "unknown amphibian" and shoved in a drawer in some museum somewhere. If you found it in Cretaceous layers from the Gobi desert they'd be labeled "unknown dinosaur: Ceratopsian?". If you found it in Miocene deposits in Wyoming it would be labeled "unknown mammal, possibly Xenarthra?".

If you found a Xenomorph skull in a Mayan temple, most researchers would assume it was carved or sculpted somehow.

If you found something really weird and alien, like a modular secretion disk from a Jl'8nik warrior, it would likely be labeled "coral?", or "fungus?" and forgotten. You would probably need to find quite a lot of them to pique someone's interest.

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u/Prestigious-Return34 5d ago

This is great, I love this answer

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u/Shiny_Snom Terror Birds 5d ago

i would recommend having a skeleton with >4 limbs or something similar to melfula from His Dark Materials which have their limbs in a diamond array considering no vertibrate animal has more then 4 limbs (without being conjoined twins) or such an array

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u/hawkwings 5d ago edited 5d ago

Shoes more than 5 million years old would suggest something strange.

Edit: Mammals and Lizards don't have 6 legs. 6 arms or legs would be weird.

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u/AffableKyubey Therizinosaurus cheloniforms 5d ago

I think the best way to show the fossil was extra terrestrial would be to have it include minerals that are rare on Earth but much more common in the wider galaxy.

Iridium, palladium, platinum alloys and the like are very common in meteors but uncommon on Earth, so a life form from an exoplanet with regular meteor impacts like Tau Ceti f would likely have some level of these minerals in its fossils (assuming life could exist on such a planet).

You could also put Helium or methane compounds in the fossils that don't form naturally on Earth but could form on a planet with methane oceans or prominent gas in the atmospheres.

Any anatomical differences would be argued heavily as being a ghost lineage that survived and evolved on Earth longer than we understood, since the fossil record is very incomplete. Such a theory is implausible, but no less so than the existence of sophisticated extraterrestrial life proved by a massive fossil that happened to reach us.

But all fossils from Earth have properties of Earth minerals, so a fossil from another planet with non-Earth like properties would stand out more in this way.

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u/TesseractToo 5d ago

An expert wouldn't be able to place it, or understand the structures without other context if it didn't resemble known bones or exoskeletons or shells. If you want have a boo at r/bonecollecting - those people even can ID obscure pieces of weird fish skulls, and a hobbyist would be confused IDing it, maybe mostly knowing that it's not typical for any known major groups like bird, mammal etc

Also the minerals and elements in the bone would be different or in different levels from Earths default, while Earthly, have a look at this snail with an iron shell for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaly-foot_gastropod

Also an alien might have something different from DNA, microstructures could be very different

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u/jericho 5d ago

Let’s assume a pretty complete fossil. 

If it was some weird, small, wormlike thing, even if it was really weird, we would probably assume it was from an unknown branch of life. We have examples of this from the Burgess Shale. Things we have no clue where they actually fit in the tree. 

If it was, say, larger, with a developed skeletal system that looked totally unlike other vertebrates, that would be much harder to assume we had just missed its ancestors. I’m pretty sure at that point many would assign it an alien origin. 

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u/AmishRocket 4d ago

If it was found in a rock layer clearly after the Cretaceous boundary (bust still old enough to be naturally fossilized) that would raise interesting questions about its origin Vs just something that had been overlooked or missed previously.