Given a limited amount of information, people tend to find an answer that fits all the data, and assumes that the data is complete. In general, when people do a little investigating and find a few answers, they extrapolate more than they should. This is the basis for stereotypes, racism, and erroneous 'scientific' views that can last for decades or centuries. Things like, "If ships disappear when they reach the horizon, then the earth is flat." or "If planes crash, then driving is safer."

I was thinking about this when I was walking by the campanile today. It was built around 1910 and, being hollow, was a useful place to store things the faculty wanted to keep, but didn't have a ready need for. Specifically, they use it to house dinosaur bones.

Now I was wondering what would happen if there was a natural disaster, war, devolution, or other event which befell Berkeley, such that, thousands or millions of years from now people (or something else) 'discovered' the UC Berkeley campus and unearthed its tallest monument, much like the Egyptian, Incan, or Peruvian pyramids, and what did they find inside but dinosaur bones?

In the absence of other evidence, would they assume the Campanile was a tomb, a holy relic, or just a big clock tower that, coincidentally, had hundred-million-year-old bones inside?

Just fodder for a short story, as if I ever got around to writing...