Blades: Wind Turbine Remains May Be Among ‘Most Surprising’ Fossils for Far Future Generations

Many of today’s everyday items are destined to become fossils after millions of years, but scientists have suggested that some of the most surprising of them might be wind turbine blades.

University of Leicester palaeontologists Professor Sarah Gabbott and Professor Jan Zalasiewicz have published a book on how all the different kinds of stuff that we make – plastic bottles, patios, mobile phones, old socks, ballpoint pens and a host of other things – will fossilise into the far future. 

Dubbed ‘technofossils’, the authors explore what these items will look like following thousands to millions of years subjected to natural processes in Discarded: How Technofossils Will be Our Ultimate Legacy.

But one fossil that might really turn heads among far-future palaeontologists as they explore the extraordinary strata of the human epoch are the relics of wind turbines.

Professor Jan Zalasiewicz, from the University’s School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, said: “The fossils won’t be of the towers, by and large – those are made of metal, which can be recycled. The enormous wind turbine blades, though, are made of materials like fibreglass and epoxy resin and carbon fibres, which are terribly hard to recycle – but easy to fossilise.