Most domesticated animals would go extinct also - but maybe not dogs, which did fine in Australia when they went wild. So, would fossil or genetic records of “intelligently designed” animals be an indicator of a lost advanced civilization?
The more highly “purebred” species probably wouldn’t survive a generation. Can you imagine a Cocker Spaniel, a Corgi, or a Great Dane surviving in the wild, without the leavings of human refuse to pick over? The dogs most likely to survive are those least modified from their wild brethren: dingos, Carolina “Yeller” Dogs, various large working spitz species, maybe some of the shepherds that haven’t been bred to stupidity and congenital hip and vision problems. In the long run, I suspect dogs would integrate back into the Canus lupus species from which they are descended, and there would likely be scarce trace, even genetically, of their existance. Fossil records are quite possible, though; the massive variation of otherwise genetically similiar canines that are all sympatrically colocated would indicate something seriously wiggy about their evolution. Ditto with horses and other domestic species if fossil records of them were preserved.
Stranger
Or it might imply that someone who had been to Egypt had also visited this continent in the couple of thousand years since. Which certainly seems a more likely explanation.
So the Scientific American article actually had the answer to this question buried away on page three of the article linked to earlier.
There we go. Long live nuclear reactors! Pun intended.
Hell, I’ve got some Klingon coins, let’s see 'em explain that!
A sudden transplantation of many species into remote environments (resulting from both deliberate and accidental transportation) might be a clue in future fossil records.
(I wonder if somebody in ten million years would be able to tell that horses went extinct in the Americas for ten thousand years, or if it would just look like a relatively minor change in the population.)
You missed the point. Even if one civilization did die out, it would have spread beforehand. It would have required large amounts of fields and would likely have left artifacts across the entire region though trade. And the idea that it would have killed everyone off instantly so they could not revive the civlization is, frankly, fabulously unlikely.