Given the staggering amounts of plastic waste accumulating in the oceans, it’s almost necessary for our morale to let our minds wander a bit — to imagine the future of this debris in a light less depressing than that of its painfully slow and fatal degradation. What if, in the long run, our trash left behind a different kind of trace — one that was purely aesthetic? Would paleontologists of the future struggle to distinguish whether a fossil they discovered was of organic or synthetic origin?…

The Anthropocene is a new geological epoch (whose legitimacy is debated within the scientific community) characterized by the emergence of humans as the primary force of change on Earth, on par with geophysical forces. Geological periods are identified by strata in rocks. Some contain fossils in abundance. According to some scientists, our current epoch will be identifiable millions of years from now by the presence, among other things, of plastics trapped in sediments (at the microscopic level, of course).

The composition shown here playfully recreates a collection of fossils of various shapes and origins. The impressions were made from plastic waste.