Giant predatory ancient insects pioneered mobile comms 310,000,000 years ago Scientists have discovered fossilised insect wings which suggest the flying creatures they belong to may have been communicating 310 million years ago – 50 million years before the first known insect comms. Discovered in Liévin, France, the fossils offer the earliest known evidence of wing-based communication in insects and …
Only if you accept that there is a "the grand scheme of things", whatever that means. In terms of those things we care about, it's not a blip. The planet doesn't care about what we do, but if we lived for a billion years, it wouldn't care either. If we sliced it in half with a laser just because, it wouldn't care. It's not that we're meaningless to things, they just don't have consciousness and don't have the ability to be interested in us.
Everything which does appear to have the ability to be interested doesn't think we're a blip. We humans of course are quite interested in our own actions, animals complex enough to recognize our presence have changed their behavior in response to those actions, organisms which don't have complex behavior have evolved to respond to our actions. If, eons from now, a different life form views the history of our civilization, it may well be a blip to them. It could also end up being wholly unimportant to them. For us, for everything else we know, it's not one.
"Analysis of the shape and structure of the long-dead creature's wing compared to modern insects suggests that these panels may have allowed T. azari to communicate by reflecting light or producing crackling noises."
It's well known by bee keepers that the sound of a hive is indicative of the condition of the colony - not just health, but also response to invaders and other threats. Given the limited gamut of bee needs for communication, this seems rather similar.
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