Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 11/10/2006

Question
If the same incident that killed off the dinosaurs happened now, in billions of years, and humans rule the planet again, would they know of our fate?  I'm assuming 'obviously' because of fossils.  How long would sturdy buildings last? Thanks

Answer
Hi,
Your question basically boils down to the "durability" of buildings over millennia or aeons.

Well! the mighty Himalayas and the Alps are the worlds youngest mountains. The himalayas started only after the Indian plate slammed into the Eurasian one by draining the Tethys sea between them.
The himalayas are just 50 million years old!

Now! If a wall of oceanfloor rock (not basalt / granite but limestone) can go up 8 kilometers high and 2000 km long..(yes the himalayas are a full 2000 km long, averaging 4-5 km high and 100-200 km wide), could grow in just 50 million years, the converse could happen in a 100 million!
refer to the link of the ice ages and the rise of the himalayas from tethys..
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/1281731.html?page=2&c=y

Sky scrapers would be like dust in front of the bulldozing wheel of time, you could hardly know they existed!

Global ice ages form unbroken icecaps  a mile high, extending to the tropics!
As the ice breaks into blaciers, the whole ice sheet continually grinds seawards in all directions, the ice erases all traces of "manmade" stuff as it grinds a few yards a day to the sea.

NOTHING remains!

Elsewhere, the Acidic natural rainwater, would steadily first erode concrete, and then the steel indide.

Only buried buildings would fossilize and survive.
These and other non bio-degradable stuff like glass storefronts with frosted names and logos...would survive indefinitely! (glass can be etched only by hydroflouric acid..not found in nature, or can be broken or melted..but profusion of such items would ensure many pieces would remain.
Future archaeologists would marvel at these, and eventually piece together the "once global" nature of a very old civilisation.
Later day Champlloins (of the rosetta stone fame) would decode new "hieroglyphs" on strange walls of glass! (doors)
And Bottles of Coke!

Dont under estimate the power of intelligence! Human or otherwise!

Please do rate this answer..
Jayen