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??what really killed the dinosaurs?

究竟是什么原因导致了恐龙灭绝？

lingering doubts about the cause of a mass extinction are put to rest

有关恐龙大灭绝的疑问终被解开

英文外刊

one thing about the prehistoric past which almost everybody thinks they know is that the dinosaurs (those, at least, that did not belong to the group of animals now known as birds) were wiped out more or less instantaneously by a collision between earth and a very large space rock.

关于史前历史，几乎所有人都知道的一件事就是恐龙（至少它们并不属于我们现在所称的鸟类）的灭绝或多或少是由于地球与一块巨大的太空陨石碰撞而导致的。

the crater from that collision was discovered decades ago in southern mexico. the effects of the giant waves created by the impact can be seen in places like hell’s creek, near bowman, north dakota, where marine creatures were swept far inland.

几十年前，人们在墨西哥南部发现了那次撞击所形成的陨石坑。人们甚至可以在北达科他州鲍曼附近的地狱溪寻觅到撞击产生的巨大海浪所造成的影响，海洋生物被巨浪席卷到了内陆深处。

and modelling suggests the planet would have been a pretty uncomfortable place for quite some time afterwards, with ejecta suspended in the atmosphere blotting out the sun, and acid rain changing the chemical composition of the oceans.

据模型显示，在撞击后的相当长的一段时间里，悬浮在空气中的喷射物遮挡了阳光，而酸

雨改变了海洋的化学成分，地球成了一个极度不适宜生存的地方。

and yet… a small group of holdouts paint a different picture. yes, they say, earth was indeed hit by an asteroid or comet some 66m years ago at the end of the cretaceous period.

然而……少数持反对意见的人则描绘出了一幅不同的画面。是的，他们承认，地球确实在6600万年前的白垩纪末期被一颗小行星或彗星撞击过。

but that was either a coincidence or the straw that broke the planet’s ecological back. for the rocks also show that a series of huge volcanic eruptions was happening at the time in what is now india.

但这要么是巧合，要么就是破坏地球生态的最后那根稻草。因为这些岩石还表明，当时在如今印度的所在地还发生了一系列大规模的火山喷发。

toxic and climate-changing gases from these eruptions, they suggest, were the underlying cause of the mass extinction that did for the dinosaurs—a point of view backed up by the fact that two earlier mass extinctions, those at the ends of the permian and triassic periods, coincided with similar eruptions while showing no sign of an asteroid strike.

他们认为，火山喷发所产生的有毒气体以及所导致的气候变化才是导致恐龙大规模灭绝的根本原因，这一观点是有事实依据作为支撑的，地球在二叠纪和三叠纪末期也经历过两次生物大灭绝，但同时期仅有火山喷发的迹象，却没有小行星撞击的迹象。

conversely, several other large bolides are known to have arrived at various times in the past without accompanying extinctions.

相反，地球在过去的不同时期还曾经历过多次巨型陨石撞击事件，但从未有物种因此而灭绝。

a paper just published in science, by pincelli hull of yale university and her colleagues, casts further light on the matter. it shows that though the deccan traps eruptions, as this period of volcanism is known, went on over the course of around 1m years, they did most of their atmospheric damage about 200,000 years before the dinosaurs disappeared.

耶鲁大学的平切利·赫尔和她的同事们近期发表在《科学》杂志上的一篇文章进一步阐明了这一问题。文章表明，尽管众所周知的印度德干地区的火山活动持续了大约100万年，但火山喷发对大气造成破坏主要发生在恐龙消失前的20万年左右。

so it was indeed, the team conclude, the impact that caused the extinction, not the volcanoes.

因此，该研究小组得出结论，导致恐龙灭绝的罪魁祸首确实是小行星的撞击，而非火山爆发。

重点词汇：

dinosaur [?da?n?s??r] n. 恐龙

suspend [s??spend] vt. 延缓；推迟；使悬浮 vi. 悬浮

composition [?kɑ?mp??z??n] n. 作文；构成；成分

coincidence [ko???ns?d?ns] n. 巧合；一致；同时发生

eruption [??r?p?n] n. 爆发，喷发

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