侏罗纪搏击俱乐部 第151期:恐龙同时离奇死亡

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　　科学家们很快发现了这些恐龙全部是同时死亡的。

　　Finding the remains³ in one place could mean only one thing.

　　在同一地点发现的遗骸只能说明一个问题。

　　The entire herd⁴ had been wiped out suddenly, and catastrophically.

　　整个恐龙群突然地、灾难性地被毁掉。

　　Ceratopsian bone beds almost certainly all represent catastrophes⁵.

　　肿鼻角龙骨床几乎可以肯定代表着大灾难。

　　And these catastrophes only happen when the animals are moving together in herds⁶.

　　这些灾难只可能在动物成群迁移时发生。

　　And in the fossil record, we see that with the Ceratopsian dinosaurs, that, every now and then, things did go wrong.

　　在化石证据里，我们能够看到角龙，不时地就会出现问题。

　　So maybe one in a hundred of the bone beds that we find turns out to be one of these mass death sites where we have horned dinosaurs that were travelling in herds that died all at once.

　　我们发现的骨床里面有百分之一会是这些带角恐龙大规模死亡之处，在这里角龙成群旅行突然死亡。

　　With the Arctic vanishing, the seasons began to change on planet earth.

　　随着北极在消失，地球上的季节开始变化。

　　This triggered deadly flash floods.

　　这导致了大型致命的洪水。

　　This is what we get if you have a lot of big animals in fast flowing water.

　　这就是当有很多大型动物在急流中时会出现的情况。

　　A single Pachyrhinosaurus could probably easily swim through even a relatively⁷ fast moving stream.

　　单独一头肿鼻角龙能够轻易游过水流相当湍急的河流。

　　But when you get two, or four, or a dozen, or a hundred going through the water they interfere⁸ with each other, their limbs trip each other up and they get entangled⁹ and they drown.

　　不过变成两头、四头或是一打乃至一百头同时过河的时候，它们会相互影响，它们的四肢绊倒对方，它们会纠缠在一起被淹死。

　　The force of the stream carries these bodies together and washes them up against the shoreline or at the curve of a stream.

　　水流会携带着这些尸体把它们冲上岸边或是在水流转弯处。

　　We see that today when a herd of antelope¹⁰ try to cross a stream at flood stage together, they get stacked up against each other.

　　现在我们能够看到一群羚羊一起穿过洪流的情形，它们相互叠在一起。

　　And that seems to be what happened at Pipestone Creek¹¹ back in the age of dinosaurs.

　　这似乎就是恐龙时期在派泊斯通溪的发生的事情。

　　The small grains of earth surrounding the bones supported the flood theory.

　　在骨头周围的泥土小颗粒支持洪水理论。

　　Different sized grains of dirt travel at different speeds.

　　不同尺寸的泥土颗粒在水流中的速度不同。

　　Fast moving water means little grains travel very quickly, bigger grains lag behind.

　　快速流动的水意味着小颗粒移动得非常快，大颗粒被甩在后面。

　　So when they found these dinosaurs they were completely encased in the same sized grain, and that tells us that these animals were washed into their position.

　　当他们找到这些恐龙时，它们是完全一样大小的颗粒，那告诉我们这些动物是被冲到它们的位置的。

　　But the flash flood raised new questions.

　　不过洪水带来了新的问题。

　　A few deaths would have been understandable, but an entire herd of Pachyrhinosaurus charging into a flood and certain death?

　　几头恐龙的死亡可以理解不过为什么整群的肿鼻角龙冲进夺命洪水之中呢？

　　Lawrence Witmer of Ohio University conducted CAT scans on the brain case of Pachyrhinosaurus looking for clues as to how the dinosaur¹ may have behaved.

　　俄亥俄大学的劳伦斯·维特莫对肿鼻角龙的颅腔进行了CAT扫描，寻找线索来了解这种恐龙可能的行为方式。

　　He found that this animal operated on raw instinct.

　　他发现这种恐龙完全靠本能反应。

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