Where can I get recent emoji?

[HandyMac]

I'm seeing a lot of these:

They look like I Ching hexagrams, but I know they're placeholders for emoji that my macOS 11 Big Sur (on a 2014 MacBook Pro) doesn't have. I don't have a newer Mac to install a later OS. Can I get a later version (as in current) of Apple Color Emoji.ttc to replace the one in my OS?

 

[Nermal]

I'm not sure about Apple's emoji specifically, but I expect if you installed something like Google's Noto Emoji then the system would fall back to it when it finds a character that it doesn't recognise. Note that I have not actually tested it.

 

[bogdanw]

Can I get a later version (as in current) of Apple Color Emoji.ttc to replace the one in my OS?

As it is stored on the read-only system volume, you can't easily replace it.
But you could try to install the latest version for All Users (Default Install Location- Computer).
https://support.apple.com/guide/font-book/change-font-book-preferences-fntbk1004/10.0/mac/11.0