字神帝國英語天地

今日主題：Giant Bird Driven Extinct by Egg-Eating Humans  沒有蛋所以沒有鳥了

洪欣老師推薦：托福聽力最好的課外教材：60-Second Science
康康精選托福會考的主題，堅持每天精聽一定會進步的哦!!

建議方法：
1. 先聽兩三遍 (不看文稿)
2. 再一句一句聽寫 (每句都要聽寫數遍，直到寫出85%以上的字)
3. 最後check文稿，看哪聽不出來，單字沒背過，還是發音不熟。
4. 堅持天天聽，就能每天進步哦。

MP3音檔 (按右鍵可下載聽)：喜歡的同學，幫忙推或按讚哦~~
http://online1.tingclass.net/voas…/2016/20160219sa_earth.mp3

只有音檔怎夠，聽不懂地方，不用怕，康康幫你準備好中英文稿了：

中英文稿：
Extinction. When species go bye-bye forever, we usually blame things like climate change, volcanic eruption or asteroid impact. But for the giant flightless birds that once roamed the Australian outback, it was an omelet station what did ‘em in. A new study finds evidence that about 47,000 years ago, humans helped to wipe out this avian leviathan by collecting and cooking its eggs. The study is in the journal Nature Communications.
滅絕。當一些物種永遠和我們說再見時，我們通常會將責任歸咎於氣候變化、火山噴發或者行星碰撞。但是一種曾經生活在澳大利亞的鳥類，這種不會飛行的鳥滅絕 的原因是它們成為了煎蛋的材料。一項新的研究發現，在大約47,000年前，人類採集並烹飪這種鳥類的蛋而加速了它們的滅絕。該研究結果發表在《自然通 訊》雜誌上。

Before humans swept over the land down under, animals of enormous proportions were not uncommon. A two-ton wombat, a thousand-pound kangaroo, and a 500-pound bird now known as Genyornis newtoni were spread across the continent. But most of these so-called megafauna disappeared once humans hit the scene.
在人類席捲新奧大陸之前，這種大型動物非常的常見。兩噸重的袋熊、千磅重的袋鼠以及500磅重的鳥，人們現在稱之為牛頓巨鳥，在當時的新奧大陸上隨處可見。但是人類出現在該地區之後，這些所謂的巨型動物就消失了。

Coincidence? Well, it could be. Which is why researchers set out to look for proof that human predation played a role in the demise of Genyornis. (Which only coincidentally sounds like ginormous.)
這是巧合?可能是吧。這就是為什麼研究人員們開始著手搜集證據，希望查找人類捕獵對於牛頓巨鳥的滅亡的影響。

They collected eggshells from hundreds of sites around the country. And they found that the shell fragments exhibited scorch marks that suggested that the eggs had been purposefully cooked over an open flame. Marks that were not consistent with the eggs getting, say, burned up in a wildfire.
研究人員從澳洲數百個地方收集了鳥蛋的化石。他們發現，這些蛋殼碎片燒焦的痕跡表明這些蛋可能經過明火的烹調。同時這些痕跡與野火灼燒的痕跡不同。

Three different dating methods put the eggs’ age in the correct era, and thus place the smoking gun—or in this case, firepit—directly in the hands of hungry humans. Which suggests that our ancestral appetite for over-easy compromised the fitness of this species. Ultimately leading to its egg-stinction.
研究人員採用三種方法追溯這些蛋正確的時代背景，並且找到確鑿的證據——或者說，火坑就是人類採取的方法。這表明我們的祖先放棄了物種的生存，而選擇了雙面煎蛋。最終導致了物種蛋的滅絕。