科学美国人60秒 意大利恐龙骨骼宝库改写当地史前记录（在线收听）

A Treasure Trove of Dinosaur Bones in Italy Rewrites the Local Prehistoric Record

意大利恐龙骨骼宝库改写当地史前记录

Emily Schwing: This is Scientific American’s 60 Second Science. I’m Emily Schwing.

When he was little, Alessandro Chiarenza’s grandmother used to read him bedtime stories about dinosaurs and she would always tell him the same thing.

Emily Schwing：这是《科学美国人》的 60 秒科学。 我是艾米丽施温。

在他小的时候，亚历山德罗·基亚伦扎的祖母常常给他读有关恐龙的睡前故事，她总是会告诉他同样的话。

Alessandro Chiarenza: Oh you know, but these things were not living here. They were living in like America and in Asia, but not here in Italy.

亚历山德罗·基亚伦扎：哦，你知道，但这些东西不是住在这里的。 他们生活在美国和亚洲，但不是在意大利。

Schwing: That bedtime story first began to change for Italian kids back in the 1990’s.

Chiarenza: We have found plenty of dinosaur records from dinosaur fossils. We started in the past decades to record the footprints, but then most importantly, we started finding bones and now, now complete skeletons of dinosaurs.

Schwing：早在 1990 年代，意大利孩子的睡前故事就开始发生变化。

Chiarenza：我们从恐龙化石中发现了大量的恐龙记录。 我们在过去几十年开始记录脚印，但最重要的是，我们开始寻找骨头，现在，现在是完整的恐龙骨骼。

Schwing: Chiarenza, a paleontologist at the University of Vigo in Spain, is part of a team that recently uncovered nearly a dozen complete dinosaur skeletons - a first in Italy. The discovery is documented in the journal Scientific Reports.  And it once again upends the bedtime story, so to speak. [Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza et al, An Italian dinosaur Lagerst?tte reveals the tempo and mode of hadrosauriform body size evolution]

Chiarenza: Usually, you don’t find multiple complete individuals altogether. It’s something historically very rare.

Schwing：西班牙维戈大学的古生物学家 Chiarenza 是最近发现近十二具完整恐龙骨骼的团队的一员，这在意大利尚属首次。 该发现记录在《科学报告》杂志中。 它再次颠覆了睡前故事，可以这么说。Chiarenza：通常，你不会找到多个完整的个体。 这是历史上非常罕见的事情。

Schwing: Back in 1994, in Trieste, a municipality in North Eastern Italy, scientists discovered Antonio - a small hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur. The skeleton is about three and a half meters long—the size of a small SUV— and very well preserved.

Chiarenza: And one peculiar feature from this dinosaur stage was relatively small from the close cousins that they were inhabiting at the time in North America and Asia and these, these dinosaurs from these exotic lands would be quite big at the time. they’re basically coexisting with the T-Rex or relatives of the T-Rex. These were like the main predators of these animals and so they were quite big.

Schwing：早在 1994 年，在意大利东北部的里雅斯特市，科学家们发现了安东尼奥——一种小型鸭嘴龙或鸭嘴恐龙。 这具骨架大约有三米半长——一辆小型SUV的大小——并且保存得非常完好。

Chiarenza：这个恐龙阶段的一个特殊特征是它们当时居住在北美和亚洲的近亲相对较小，而这些来自这些异国土地的恐龙当时会相当大。 它们基本上与霸王龙或霸王龙的亲戚共存。 它们就像这些动物的主要捕食者，所以它们很大。

Schwing: When he was discovered, scientists theorized that Antonio was a victim of something called the “island rule.” The site of Antonio’s discovery—Villaggio Del Pestacore—was once part of an island that sat in the middle of a proto-Mediterranean sea, known as Tethys. In fact this is how Antonio came to acquire his scientific name: Tethyshadros insularis. Insularis means “from an island,” according to Chiarenza. And as the old story goes, Antonia would have been a ‘dwarf’ species because of limited resources on that island.

But this all changed when Bruno, a hadrosaur of the same species was discovered.

Chiarenza: We know that if you cut a dinosaur skeleton, you can see some structure which is more comparable or analogous to what you see in a tree ring, so you count them and you can see how old these animals are. And we realized that the bigger skeleton, which was named Bruno, was older in age than the younger one, the skeleton of Antonio, the one that was smaller in size.

Schwing：当他被发现时，科学家推测安东尼奥是“岛屿统治”的受害者。安东尼奥的发现地——Villaggio Del Pestacore——曾经是位于原始地中海中间的一个岛屿的一部分，该岛屿被称为特提斯岛。事实上，安东尼奥就是这样获得了他的学名：Tethyshadros insularis。根据 Chiarenza 的说法，Insularis 的意思是“来自一个岛屿”。正如古老的故事所说，由于该岛上的资源有限，安东尼娅本来是一个“侏儒”物种。

但是，当布鲁诺发现了同一物种的鸭嘴龙时，这一切都改变了。

Chiarenza：我们知道，如果你切开恐龙骨骼，你会看到一些结构更类似于或类似于你在年轮中看到的结构，因此你可以数一数，就可以看到这些动物的年龄。我们意识到，被命名为布鲁诺的较大骨架的年龄比较小的安东尼奥骨架年龄大。

Schwing: Antonio is roughly the size of a small car SUV, but Bruno is a meter longer - closer to the size of a larger minivan.

Chiarenza: So Antonio is a complete skeleton and Bruno, it's 70 to 75 percent complete. There is another skeleton which is still on the ground and waits to be discovered to be completely recovered and prepared. And this is actually—it's nicknamed Rocco and is potentially even bigger than Bruno.

Schwing：Antonio 的大小与小型汽车 SUV 差不多，但 Bruno 长一米——接近大型小型货车的大小。

Chiarenza：所以安东尼奥是一个完整的骨架，而布鲁诺则完成了 70% 到 75%。 还有一具骷髅仍在地上，等待被发现，以完全恢复和准备。 这实际上是——它的绰号是 Rocco，可能比 Bruno 还要大。

Schwing: The discovery of Bruno and Rocco have totally upended Antonio’s story. And so have other findings at the site.

Chiarenza: Dinosaurs were not the only fossil remains from the area. We also find shrimps, plants. We find crocodiles. We find all sorts of dinosaurs which still are pending proper descriptions,  flying reptiles like pterosaurs.

Schwing：布鲁诺和罗科的发现彻底颠覆了安东尼奥的故事。 该网站的其他发现也是如此。

Chiarenza：恐龙不是该地区唯一的化石遗骸。 我们还发现虾、植物。 我们发现鳄鱼。 我们发现各种各样的恐龙仍在等待适当的描述，像翼龙一样会飞爬行动物。

Schwing: Chiarenza says he also imagines the region as a marginal marine area.

Chiarenza: There were probably more mainland connections, so you would have found this vegetated beach surrounded by like a little bit of higher ground, then more vegetated and forested areas that we're sort of going towards continental Europe. And you probably would have seen these dinosaurs like Tethyshadros potentially moving together, like in a group, maybe drinking in, you know, on a river side.

Schwing：Chiarenza 说他还把该地区想象成一个边缘海洋区域。

Chiarenza：可能有更多的大陆联系，所以你会发现这个植被茂盛的海滩被高地包围，然后是更多的植被和森林区域，我们正朝着欧洲大陆前进。 你可能会看到像特提沙德罗斯这样的恐龙可能会一起移动，就像在一个群体中一样，也许在河边喝水。

Schwing: The team also collected new data on the geology of the area. They redated the rocks to 80 million years ago, which is 10 million years older than thought.

Chiarenza: Which also led us to think that at the time, the paleogeography of the area was actually different. It wasn’t the islands archipelago that it was speculated before But it was actually a more continuous with larger, more extended land masses that probably we're offering up connections between not only the western part of Europe and the eastern part of Europe, but with also Asia and eventually Africa. So it probably was supporting more population of larger animals that had more available resources.

Schwing：该团队还收集了有关该地区地质的新数据。 他们将这些岩石重新计算为 8000 万年前，比想象的要早 1000 万年。

Chiarenza：这也让我们认为当时该地区的古地理实际上是不同的。 之前推测的不是岛屿群岛，但它实际上是一个更连续、更大、更延伸的陆块，我们可能不仅在欧洲西部和欧洲东部之间提供连接，而且 也有亚洲，最终还有非洲。 因此，它可能支持更多拥有更多可用资源的大型动物种群。

Schwing: So what comes next in the new version of this Italian dinosaur saga? Chiarenza says he’s particularly interested in looking at what he and colleagues can learn from past changes in climate.

Chiarenza: Trying to learn which species might have been more sensitive to some climate change and trying to infer what did that might meant for their adaptations.

Schwing：那么这个意大利恐龙传奇的新版本接下来会发生什么？ 基亚伦扎说，他对研究自己和同事可以从过去的气候变化中学到什么特别感兴趣。

Chiarenza：试图了解哪些物种可能对某些气候变化更敏感，并试图推断这可能对它们的适应意味着什么。

Schwing: He says the next chapter in this story will be to parse out how changes in climate over time drove the distribution of dinosaurs across Europe, into Asia and in other parts of the world.

Schwing：他说这个故事的下一章将解析随着时间的推移气候变化如何推动恐龙在欧洲、亚洲和世界其他地区的分布。