There's a Ian Banks short story where one of the omnipotent Culture spaceships visits the Earth and scans it on its whole and sees all the fossils every fossilized.
I always found this an fascinating thought. Imagine technology progresses so that we can just scan the whole earth, or at least large parts of the surface. Then you could look at everything ever fossilized in one go, and completely change natural history.
Sometimes I get that feeling looking at the history of large software projects that have been around a while through upgrades, downgrades, branches, growth, layoffs, acquisitions, mergers etc etc. I like the sound of "whole earth scan".
I always found this an fascinating thought. Imagine technology progresses so that we can just scan the whole earth, or at least large parts of the surface. Then you could look at everything ever fossilized in one go, and completely change natural history.