万物简史 第471期:生命在前进(13)

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　　He read it instead at the next annual meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement¹ of Science, 他转而把论文在澳新科学促进协会的下一次年会上宣读，

　　but it failed to find favor with the association's head, 但没有博得协会头儿的欢心。

　　who said the Ediacaran imprints² were merely "fortuitous inorganic³ markings"—patterns made by wind or rain or tides, but not living beings. 那位头儿说，埃迪亚卡拉印子只是“由非生物偶然留下的记号”——即不是由生物形成的，而是由风吹雨打或潮汐运动形成的图案。

　　His hopes not yet entirely⁴ crushed, Sprigg traveled to London and presented his findings to the 1948 International Geological Congress, 斯普里格的希望并没有完全破灭，他来到伦敦，把自己的发现提交给1948年国际地质学大会，

　　but failed to excite either interest or belief. 但既没有引起兴趣，也没有人相信。

　　Finally, for want of a better outlet⁵, he published his findings in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia. 最后，在没有更好的出路的情况下，他把自己的成果发表在《南澳大利亚皇家学会学报》上。

　　Then he quit his government job and took up oil exploration. 接着，他辞去了政府里的职务，开始从事石油勘探工作。

　　Nine years later, in 1957, a schoolboy named John Mason, while walking through Charnwood Forest in the English Midlands, found a rock with a strange fossil in it,  9年之后，l957年，一位名叫约翰·梅森的小学生在穿越英格兰中部昌伍德森林的时候，发现一块岩石里有一种古怪的化石，

　　similar to a modern sea pen and exactly like some of the specimens⁷ Sprigg had found and been trying to tell everyone about ever since. 样子很像现代的海笔，跟斯普里格发现的、此后一直想告诉大家的有些标本完全相同。

　　The schoolboy turned it in to a paleontologist at the University of Leicester, who identified it at once as Precambrian. 那位小学生把化石交给了莱斯特大学的一位古生物学家。他马上认出那是寒武纪之前的东西。

　　Young Mason got his picture in the papers and was treated as a precocious⁸ hero; he still is in many books. 小梅森的照片被刊登在报纸上，他被当做一名早熟的英雄，直到现在，许多书里仍然提到他的事迹。

　　The specimen⁶ was named in his honor Chamia masoni. 为了纪念他，那个标本被命名为梅森恰尼海鳃属。

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