英语听力：探索发现 2012-05-30 恐龙是怎样的炼成的—5

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There’s a piece of rib² here that’s going into the ground about this angle. And then there’s a piece of the pubis, the hip³ bone right here. And it’s almost complete, save for just the very back end which has already started to weather off. 

 

Luis has to decide what to do with these finds. Starting a new dig is huge undertaking⁴ requiring time and money, and he has limited resources.

 

We already have 2 very good sites with long-neck dinosaurs⁶. And we’re a little reluctant to, you know, open another excavation⁷. 

 

Just half a mile away is one of their sites. Luis’ team began working it a year ago. Most of the bones are still embedded⁸ in the rock, and must be painstakingly⁹ excavated¹⁰. Luis knows from the layer of rock they’re digging that these dinosaurs died 150 million years ago. But he doesn’t know what species it is, and it’s potentially a dinosaur⁵ which has just never been seen before. 

 

We’re actually collecting in an area that has not been sampled and no one has really worked here before. The possibility of having a new species is very, very exciting. 

 

A fossil dig is like a murder scene—every piece of evidence about what happened 150 million years ago has to be salvaged¹¹. The layout of the entire site will be mapped and the precise location of every bone fragment recorded to help piece together the remains. The more complete the skeleton, the easier it will be to identify, and the greater the likelihood that this dinosaur will be turned into an exhibit. 

 

We have hind¹² limbs, we have forelimbs, we have a lot of the tail, we have ribs¹³, we have many parts of the skeleton and now we’re starting to uncover the neck. I would anticipate that we’re gonna have to keep opening the quarry¹⁴ to uncover many other neck vertebrae and hopefully the skull¹⁵.

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