万物简史 第465期:生命在前进(7)

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Snow was falling—winter comes early to the Canadian Rockies—so they didn't linger, but the next year at the first opportunity Walcott returned to the spot. 天正下着雪——在加拿大的落基山脉，冬天来得很早——因此他们没有久留。但是，到了第二年，沃尔科特一有机会就回到了现场。

Tracing the presumed route of the rocks' slide, he climbed 750 feet to near the mountain's summit. 他沿着岩石估计会滑行的路线攀登了200多米，爬到接近山顶的位置。

There, 8,000 feet above sea level, he found a shale outcrop, about the length of a city block, 在海拔2438米的地方。他发现了一个页岩露头，长度大约相当于城市的一个街区，

containing an unrivaled array of fossils from soon after the moment when complex life burst forth⁴ in dazzling profusion—the famous Cambrian explosion. 里面蕴藏着一大批化石，远自复杂生命大爆爱——即著名的寒武纪大爆发——之后不久的时候。

Walcott had found, in effect, the holy grail of paleontology. 沃尔科特发现的实际上是古生物学的圣杯。

The outcrop became known as the Burgess Shale, 那片露头后来被称之为布尔吉斯页岩，

and for a long time it provided "our sole vista⁵ upon the inception⁶ of modern life in all its fullness," as the late Stephen Jay Gould recorded in his popular book Wonderful Life. 取自它所在的山冈的名字。在很长时间里，正如已故的斯蒂芬·杰伊·古尔德在他深受欢迎的著作《奇异的生命》中所说的，它是“惟一向我们充分展示现代生命起端的地方”。

Gould, ever scrupulous⁷, discovered from reading Walcott's diaries that the story of the Burgess Shale's discovery appears to have been somewhat embroidered⁸, 在阅读沃尔科特日记的过程中，向来细心的古尔德发现，有关发现布尔吉斯页岩的故事似乎有点儿添油加醋，

Walcott makes no mention of a slipping horse or falling snow—but there is no disputing that it was an extraordinary find. 沃尔科特既没有提及马失前蹄，也没有谈到天下着雪——但那是一项非同寻常的发现，这是无可争议的。

It is almost impossible for us whose time on Earth is limited to a breezy few decades to appreciate how remote in time from us the Cambrian outburst was. 我们在地球上只能存在短短的几十年，因此几乎不可能体会到寒武纪大爆发离我们有多么遥远。

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