英国新闻听力 中国工地发现恐龙大规模灭绝前的化石（在线收听）

A recently discovered fossil has given scientists an insight into creatures that flourished just before the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. The bird like animal was discovered on a Chinese building site. Dr. Steven is from the University of Edinburgh.

This is one of the last surviving dinosaurs of all, the last few million years of dinosaurs. And it’s part of this group that was flourishing during this time. They were the last group of dinosaurs that went through a big wave of diversification.

I heard more from our science correspondent Victoria Gill.

It has a lovely story in terms of how it was found actually. It’s called ”muddy dragon on the roads to heaven”. And that’s apparently because it was mired in the mud when it was stuck 72 million years ago. And it died there, very sadly for the dinosaur, but that means that when that mud turned to rock, it was preserved. But when it was found which was actually on a construction site by a construction team who were building a high school, they were dynamiting at the time that they noticed the fossil but apparently, spotted it just before they blew it into oblivion. So luckily for science it was discovered rather than blasted away.

Yeah, and following that discovery, what has it told us?

So it’s an oviraptorosaur and which is a bird like dinosaur right from the end of the age of dinosaurs. And what’s interesting about this is that these very strange looking, beaked, crest headed, strange feathered dinosaurs were very close relatives of modern birds. So this is basically a snapshot of what dinosaurs looked like before that evolutionary trajectory started. It’s right the end of the age of dinosaurs. It’s these weird winged creatures that used to be very mysterious but with these fossil beds in southern China that have been excavated now and with finds in North America as well, we are finding out more and more about what they looked like, how they would have lived and what the world would have looked like at that time right at the end of the cretaceous period.

And briefly do we know why they evolved there?

We know that there was a big diversification done in dinosaurs and these were mysterious beasts that seemed to have started off on that journey. But we don’t really know why at that particular point they evolved except that they were eating very different things from their relatives. They had a very omnivorous diet and were eating small creatures and insects as well, so much more of a bird diet. So building up a picture that will tell us much more about what that world would have looked like and how that evolutionary journey started.

Victoria Gill.

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一具最新出土的化石让科学家们更加深入地了解了恐龙大规模灭绝前兴盛的物种。这种类鸟动物发掘于中国某一建筑工地。爱丁堡大学的史蒂芬博士对此有话说。

这是所有恐龙中生存到最后的一批中的一个，是最后几百万年里的恐龙之一。它是当时这个兴盛群体中的一员。他们是最后一批经历进化浪潮的恐龙。

本台科学记者维多利亚·吉尔详细报道。

说到人们怎么发现它，背后有一个有趣的故事。它叫“通天路泥龙”，显然是因为它7200万年前陷入泥中无法脱身，最后死在那里，对恐龙来说是个很悲伤的故事，但这意味着泥化为岩石后，恐龙被保存了下来。它是在一个建筑工地上被盖中学的建筑队发现的，当时他们正在进行爆破，然后看到了化石，显然他们发现了它，才不至于使其灰飞烟灭。所以对科学来说是幸运的，因为它被发现而未被炸掉。

是的，接着这个发现说，它告诉了我们什么？

它是一种偷蛋龙，是恐龙末期长得像鸟类的恐龙。有意思的是这些长相怪异、有喙、头上有冠、长羽毛的奇怪恐龙与现代鸟类有很近的亲缘关系。所以这基本就是演化轨迹开始前恐龙样貌的写照。这些有翅膀的奇怪生物在过去非常神秘，但现在有了中国南部挖掘出的化石层和北美洲的发现，我们越来越多地了解了他们曾经长什么样子，如何生存以及当时也就是白垩纪的末期世界是什么样。

那我们大致知道恐龙为什么在那个节点进化吗？

我们知道当时恐龙种群中有一次大进化过程，这些神秘兽类似乎已经在当时开启了这个旅程。但我们不太清楚它们为何在那个特殊节点进化，只知道它们和同类吃非常不同的食物。它们无所不吃，还吃小动物和昆虫等，所以更像是鸟类的饮食习惯。因此，勾勒一幅图景能更多地告诉我们当时世界的面貌以及恐龙进化之旅如何开启。

维多利亚·吉尔报道。

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