Paleontology in the 32nd Century

From  Scientific Avalonian, March 3115

The science of paleontology is one that had remained rather under-developed and under-utilized during Mankind’s expansion across the stars. While understanding the origins and past of life on Terra had always been a source of fascination for humanity, the same could not be said of the myriad of other worlds that he touched. While it could be said that humans had a vested interest in their homeworld’s past, it is clear that those other worlds they inhabited did not have the same attachment.

It is estimated that the fossil records of less than one percent of all the inhabited worlds in the Inner Sphere have been even adequately explored. Even then, much of that exploration has been very shallow, only providing a cursory glance at their evolutionary pasts. Worlds that have supported life for billions of years have pasts that are largely unknown, and with very few who are interested in exploring them further.

And yet, Archaeology is the key driver of expeditions to the unknown as well as the search for the past. When you consider mankind has only been in space for a millennium, it seems strange that the drive to recover relics of that comparative instant would be more important than the epochs that came before it. However, if one digs deeper – pun intentional – there are a number of reasons for this disparity.

The first is the obvious one stated above; mankind has no biological attachment to any world but Terra. While mankind has spread over countless stars, on every world but one he is an alien, an introduced species. The pasts of those worlds do not affect where he came from or how he came to be, and as such, removes much of his drive to understand them. The stories of those worlds are not humanity’s story; to them he is but an outsider, an oft-disinterested spectator.

This factor leads to the second point, which is mankind’s approach to those worlds he inhabits. Without trying to turn this discussion into a soapbox, it has allways been humanity’s approach to try and change those worlds he inhabits into something better suited to his needs. Massive terraforming and eco-structuring efforts are probably the most visible examples of these, but hardly the only ones.

In many cases, the native life of worlds colonised by humans were swept away when it was deemed to be incompatible  with human habitation. Once removed, Mankind could replace it wholesale with those creatures and plants he bought from his home. In other cases, the natives were unable to compete with the invaders, and were simply displaced or rendered extinct by the new arrivals. The tragic (and yet darkly amusing) tale of the Calloway Wildebeest is the perfect example.

Given that in so many cases humans had relentlessly exterminated those creatures in the name of progress, it should be of little surprise that there has been very little interest in the pasts of those worlds. After all, who wants to dedicate their career towards the ancestors of a pseudo-rodent that died out within a century of first contact?

This process has often been exacerbated by the development of those worlds colonised by humans. It was a rare case where fossils and other such evidence were not simply destroyed in the process of colonising a world. Consider how many planets were initially colonised for mining or resource extraction, and you can see the source of the problem.

Which brings us to the third problem that hampers the cause of planetology. Consider the Branths of Lopez. Flying reptiles that resembled the Dragons of Terran myth, and completely unique of all the species discovered in the Inner Sphere. The evolutionary tale of how these creatures came to be would have been a fascinating one that had remained only lightly explored. While much of this was due to environmental concerns (any sort of development of Lopez was difficult due to the world’s unusually sensitive ecosystem), the biggest single impediment to the exploration of Lopez’ past came from humankind. In 3080, Lopez was rendered uninhabitable by a series of asteroid strikes, artificial in nature. With it not only went the Branth as a species, but its entire past as well.

 Lopez may be the most tragic example of this problem in action, but it is far from the only one. Consider the Tabarinths of Jardine, a world that was ‘killed’ twice in its history, and today is buried under volcanic basalt. Or Caph, where its dinosaur parallels were rendered all but extinct by the Succession Wars. Exploration of their pasts had been also rendered impossible, as those continents were contaminated and hazardous to all life.

In these cases as with so many others, warfare has served as an impediment to the cause of paleontology. Given how many worlds have died due to humanity’s influence, it is impossible to determine how many of them had records of their past left to be discovered. Will we ever know what swam in the seas of ancient Vanataa or flew in the skies of Zara in times past? What of Versailles or Sharpe and whatever secrets their past might have held? Unfortunately, we will never know.

Finally, there has been one last obstacle to overcome, and that is the simple perception of paleontology as a science. Due to the factors mentioned above, paleontology has become sidelined and marginalised, a science that is rarely considered and certainly rarely funded. Often, when it is given attention, it comes in two forms, and it is debatable which can be worse.

The first is in the form of high-profile, attractive or ‘sexy’ research in the name of specific goals or high-profile objectives. The Nagashima expedition of 3049 is an excellent example, aimed solely at exploring the fossil history of the Kyotan Armour Bear. Run more as a media circus then an actual scientific expedition, the result was a veritable explosion of junk science accompanied by lurid recreations of extinct life-forms. Very little serious work went into the expedition, resulting in it possibly doing more harm then good.

The second of these comes in the form of fringe science, which paleontology often serves to support. In this case, the motivations behind the research can often be bizzare, the products of seemingly deranged minds or massive leaps of logic. Many of these expeditions are driven to search for things that do not exist or have been long since discarded by the scientific community, such as the search for fossil remnants of extinct sentient life forms. The quest for “ancient astronauts” has become almost a universal joke, and yet remains a persistent source of funding.

Other examples of such ‘junk’ science include attempts to ‘prove’ the existence of prehistoric spacefaring races through the spread of animals across the Inner Sphere. These usually take the form of trying to find fossils that ‘prove’ that a species was translocated from one world to another by whatever means. A typical example was again the Tabarith, with the fringe trying to claim that they were descended from Terran felines (or vice-versa). Of course, the inability to prove such claims due to Jardine’s destruction only fueled such nonsense.

Regardless, Paleontology does remain a viable science, even if one that exists on the fringes. Interstellar Expeditions has funded a number of expeditions, albeit often in support of their more conventional archaeological ones, that have yielded valuable results. And in an age of peace, this may be the time for mankind to finally, after so long, get to better know the universe he lives in.