Washed out by the recent rains, I came across this artefact this morning on the way to work. It was found near a pasture, with grazing cows and all, but definitely did not originate with this species. For that, optical corrosion dating indicates it was there for far too long:

 

more later, still writing as research continues…..

Preliminary Conclusion:

This must be what we would like to call Junk Transformer DNA: The striplike configuration and repetitive pattern indicate a tendence to return to their former spiral shape. However, logic dictates that in order to reach a higher information density, the material needs to be spatially folded rather than torqued. Normal biological DNA would leave by far too much space unused, so it stands to reason that this mechanical form of DNA is no longer helical but linear in shape, with regular indentations to allow for folding at specific intervals. 

Notice please the symbolic numeral codes used, and their self-similarity in the left digits:

These codes are numerical, and decimal. We would gather that this race has not yet reached it’s full potential, since higher compression rates are definitely achievable using higher cardinality, or just larger character sets. Since these codes just increment regularly, we figure this particular strain of DNA does not have any significant function within the grander scheme of things.

The dark holes on the left are obviously start markers, indicating where the higher values can be found.  The fold at the right side indicates a halfway reference, signifying to the double redundancy these systems are equipped with. On the back there are similar markings for the backup system. 

We are excited at the prospect of trying to clone this system from the remaining partial codes. Our knowledge that the Cosmos is fractal and holographic, we figure that enough information can be gleamed off the sample to facilitate reconstruction….

(S)He’ll be back !