Ten thousand years from now, archaeologists will stumble upon one of the most baffling sights they have ever seen. They will uncover a small cache of impossibly advanced fossils – fossils that could not possibly be what they appear to be.

The objects appear similar to the robotic animals of the archaeologists’ day, but they clearly predate the contemporary iterations of these creatures. Is it possible that robots evolved into sentient, reproductive beings far earlier than the history books taught them?

The fossils are actually the work of artist Chase Black. He calls them Creatures of the Mechazoic Era, and they are meant to look like found relics of an imagined past. Or should that be an imagined future?