纪录片《地球劫难日》 第32期 我们的祖先（在线收听）

Almost all life in every shape and form across the surface of the globe would have died.

地球上各种各样的生物几乎全都遇难。

Here at long last was an explanation that tied up all the loose ends and accounted for all the evidence.

终于有了一种解释能拼凑起所有这些零碎资料，并说明所有的证据。

The cause of the Permian mass extinction may finally have been found.

科学家们或许真的找到了二叠纪生物大灭绝的原因。

It would take nearly 100,000 years for life on earth to begin to recover.

直到10万年以后地球才开始恢复生机。

When it did, a new family of creatures ruled the world.

那时一类新的物种统治了世界。

This was the birth of the age of the dinosaurs,

恐龙时代由此开启，

but geologists have found that one of the strange, half mammal/half reptiles of the Permian world did survive.

但是地质学家们发现二叠纪的一种奇特的半哺乳类半爬行类动物也活了下来。

It was a cow-sized plant eater called lystrosaurus.

它是一种和牛一样大的植食动物，叫做水龙兽。

This strange looking creature is one of the most important animals that ever walked the earth,

这种模样奇怪的动物是地球史上最重要的陆地动物之一，

because lystrosauras was the ancestor of all mammals and so, ultimately, of us.

因为这些水龙兽正是所有哺乳动物的祖先，当然也是我们的祖先。

We're only here today because this odd looking creature somehow clung to life during the mother of all distinctions.

我们今天之所以在世上，就是因为这些长相古怪的家伙顽强地挺过了地球上最惨烈的一场生物大灭绝。