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科学美国人60秒 SSS 大骨鸡可能是人类的地质遗产

时间:2019-12-10 06:06:27

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This is Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

Hundreds of millions of years from now, when humans are probably long gone, what sort of geologic1 record will we l??eave behind for future archaeologists? Plastics, sure? Concrete, maybe? How about: (CLIP: chicken ad montage: "The tasty tender chicken.""Great chicken!""Woo! Chicken!")

Yep, chicken. Humanity consumes some 66 billion birds a year. Billion, with a B. The mass of chickens on the Earth is so big... it beats the mass of all other birds combined.

"The numbers are astonishing." Richard Thomas is an archaeologist at the University of Leicester, who writes with his colleagues in the journal Royal Society Open Science that chicken bones could be a unique signifier of our era...known as the 'Anthropocene.'

Thomas says our chicken-industrial complex can be traced back to a program in the late 1940s, called the "Chicken-of-Tomorrow" program.

(CLIP: Chicken-of-Tomorrow archival audio: "Yes, indeed, chickens and eggs are a big business. And like big business there's a serious effort to improve the product. A three-year program to breed a better chicken is now being ca??rried on.")

"They came up with this fast-growing meat chicken." Then, in the decades to come, selective breeding, gene2 editing, antibiotics3 and new types of feed and housing helped maximize chickens' weight gain even more. "The chickens of today are something like four times heavier than the original broiler chickens of the 1950s."

The upshot, he says, is these bigger-boned broilers are huge compared to the wild red jungle fowl4 they're descended5 from. And modern chickens will stand out in the fossil record, for their size and especially their ubiquity.

"We're gonna find these huge middens, as we'd call them archaeologically6, these huge rubbish heaps that are gonna be filled with the fossilized remains7 of chickens. So they're going to be the overwhelming animal species we find."

And that, folks, may be the foremost legacy8 that human greatness leaves behind. And all without solving one of the most enduring mysteries of all.

(CLIP: Chicken-of-Tomorrow clip: "After all these years, whether the chicken or the egg came first is still the subject of a lot of good-natured debate.")

Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.


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1 geologic dg3x9     
adj.地质的
参考例句:
  • The Red Sea is a geologic continuation of the valley.红海就是一个峡谷在地质上的继续发展。
  • Delineation of channels is the first step of geologic evaluation.勾划河道的轮廓是地质解译的第一步。
2 gene WgKxx     
n.遗传因子,基因
参考例句:
  • A single gene may have many effects.单一基因可能具有很多种效应。
  • The targeting of gene therapy has been paid close attention.其中基因治疗的靶向性是值得密切关注的问题之一。
3 antibiotics LzgzQT     
n.(用作复数)抗生素;(用作单数)抗生物质的研究;抗生素,抗菌素( antibiotic的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • the discovery of antibiotics in the 20th century 20世纪抗生素的发现
  • The doctor gave me a prescription for antibiotics. 医生给我开了抗生素。
4 fowl fljy6     
n.家禽,鸡,禽肉
参考例句:
  • Fowl is not part of a traditional brunch.禽肉不是传统的早午餐的一部分。
  • Since my heart attack,I've eaten more fish and fowl and less red meat.自从我患了心脏病后,我就多吃鱼肉和禽肉,少吃红色肉类。
5 descended guQzoy     
a.为...后裔的,出身于...的
参考例句:
  • A mood of melancholy descended on us. 一种悲伤的情绪袭上我们的心头。
  • The path descended the hill in a series of zigzags. 小路呈连续的之字形顺着山坡蜿蜒而下。
6 archaeologically 0f3d0d3dc95d8e0a135a1d07d1105c6d     
archaeology(考古学)的变形
参考例句:
  • An archaeologically valuable ancient tomb was unearthed in the underlying soil of this corn field. 这片玉米地下伏土层中出土了一个有考古价值的古墓。
  • The first chapter researchs archaeologically the formation and characters of English common law. 第一章对英国普通法的形成、特征和美国对英国普通法的继受进行了考古研究。
7 remains 1kMzTy     
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹
参考例句:
  • He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
  • The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。
8 legacy 59YzD     
n.遗产,遗赠;先人(或过去)留下的东西
参考例句:
  • They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
  • He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。

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