Right but I think in terms of interstellar colonization there can’t really be a concept of an outpost how we think of say bases in Antarctica or the ISS. If you

Right but I think in terms of interstellar colonization there can’t really be a concept of an outpost how we think of say bases in Antarctica or the ISS. If you’re sending people to another star system, it has to be a minimum viable colony or nothing. In regards to fossils, excellent point. The problem is that despite all of the fossils we’ve found, overall it accounts for less than 1% of all species that have ever existed on Earth. The odds of finding even a single fossil from an animal from a non-terrestrial colony are exceptionally low. Not zero, but so low as to be extremely unlikely.