France, March 26 -- Plastic bottles, smartphones, chicken bones - and the wider debris of everyday life - are tipped to outlast human civilisation and become the defining fossils of our age.

Fossils are usually associated with dinosaur bones or ancient sea creatures preserved in stone. But scientists now believe that modern waste - from polyester clothing to electronic devices - is writing an entirely new chapter in Earth's geological story.

As these everyday items are buried and compressed over millennia, they're forming what experts call technofossils - distinctive markers of human civilisation that could outlast our species by millions of years.

In the far future, a thin but unmistakable layer is expected toappear in Earth's rock re...