Back in Pakistan in 2000, Gingerich finally saw his first whale ankle.
2000年,金格里奇重返巴基斯坦,终于看到了第一条有踝骨的鲸鱼了。
Philip Gingerich had unintentionally taken up this challenge in the mid-1970s.
70年代中期,菲利普.金格里奇无意中接受了挑战。
Along with the bones of prehistoric sea monsters, Gingerich has found the remains of unlucky humans.
这里不仅有史前海洋巨无霸的残骸,金格·里奇还陆续发现了不幸人类的遗体。
Later the same month Gingerich came across some archaic whale specimens in museums in Lucknow and Kolkata (Calcutta), India.
同月,金格里奇在印度勒克瑙(Lucknow)和加尔各答(Kolkata)的博物馆里偶然看到了古代鲸鱼标本。
Gingerich and many other paleontologists trusted the hard evidence of the bones more than the molecular comparisons of living animals.
证据确凿的骨骼证据,分子学家的分子比照,金格·里奇和其他古生物学家更相信前者。
Walking back to camp that evening, Gingerich and his team passed a group of village children playing dice with the astragali of a goat.
那天傍晚,在回营地的途中,金格·里奇和团队路过一个村庄,孩子们正用山羊踝骨玩骰子游戏。
"That's when the tiny braincase started to make sense, because early whales have big skulls and relatively small brains," Gingerich remembers.
“那时,小脑开始有意义了,因为早期鲸头骨比较大,而大脑相对小点,”金格里奇回忆说。
Gingerich believes the first cetaceans probably resembled anthracotheres, svelte hippo-like browsers that inhabited swampy lowlands in Eocene times.
金格里奇相信第一批鲸和沼泽地碳兽十分相似,一种生活在始新世时期沼泽低地里,形似河马的小型食草动物。
Over the past 27 years Gingerich and his colleagues have located the remains of more than a thousand whales here, and countless more are left to be discovered.
在过去的27年里,金格里奇和同事们已在此地发现了1000多架鲸残骸,还有更多尚待发掘。
At first Gingerich thought the two bones were the single-pulley astragali from the animal's left and right legs-proof that he'd been right about the origin of whales.
起先,金格·里奇还以为这两根骨头分别来自动物左右腿的单滑轮踝骨——这也能证明之前鲸的起源推测是正确的。
Thanks in large part to Philip Gingerich, the fossil record of whales now offers one of the most stunning demonstrations of Darwinian evolution rather than a refutation of it.
这在很大程度上得益于菲利普。金格里奇的鲸化石档案,为达尔文的进化提供了有利证据,而非反戈一击。
It was a bureaucratic problem, as it had to do with naming rights for these kinds of things, " said Owen Gingerich, the Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer who chaired the committee."
“这是一个官僚性质的问题,因为它涉及到对这些星体的命名权等诸如此类的事务”,作为委员会的主持者,哈佛大学斯密森学会的Owen Gingerich这样说到。
It was a bureaucratic problem, as it had to do with naming rights for these kinds of things, " said Owen Gingerich, the Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer who chaired the committee."
“这是一个官僚性质的问题,因为它涉及到对这些星体的命名权等诸如此类的事务”,作为委员会的主持者,哈佛大学斯密森学会的Owen Gingerich这样说到。
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