科学美国人Scientific American EP376 |意大利的恐龙骨骼宝藏改写了当地的史前记录

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. 


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.


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: 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 Lagerstätte 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.  


For 60 Second Science, I’m Emily Schwing. 

【参考译文】

艾米丽-施温。这里是《科学美国人》的60秒科学。我是Emily Schwing。


小时候，Alessandro Chiarenza的祖母经常给他读关于恐龙的睡前故事，她总是告诉他同样的事情。


Alessandro Chiarenza。哦，你知道，但这些东西并不是生活在这里。他们生活在美国和亚洲，但不是在意大利。


施温。早在20世纪90年代，意大利孩子的睡前故事就开始发生了变化。


奇亚伦扎。我们已经从恐龙化石中发现了大量的恐龙记录。在过去的几十年里，我们开始记录脚印，但后来最重要的是，我们开始找到骨头，现在，现在是完整的恐龙骨架。


施温。西班牙维哥大学的古生物学家Chiarenza是一个团队的成员，该团队最近发现了近十具完整的恐龙骨架--这在意大利是第一次。这一发现被记录在《科学报告》杂志上。 而且它再次颠覆了睡前故事，可以说是。[Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza等人，一个意大利恐龙Lagerstätte揭示了黑龙类身体尺寸进化的节奏和模式] 。


希亚伦扎。通常情况下，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。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--一种小型黑龙，或鸭嘴龙。骨架大约有3.5米长，相当于一辆小型SUV的大小，而且保存得非常好。


奇亚伦扎。而这个恐龙阶段的一个奇特的特征是相对于它们当时居住在北美和亚洲的近亲来说比较小，而这些，这些来自这些异国他乡的恐龙在当时会相当大。它们基本上与T-Rex或T-Rex的亲属共存。这些就像是这些动物的主要捕食者，所以它们相当大。


施温。当他被发现时，科学家们推测安东尼奥是一个被称为 "岛屿规则 "的受害者。安东尼奥被发现的地点--Villaggio Del Pestacore--曾经是一个岛屿的一部分，这个岛屿位于原地中海的中间，被称为特提斯海。事实上，这就是安东尼奥如何获得他的学名：Tethyshadros insularis。Chiarenza说，Insularis的意思是 "来自一个岛屿"。正如古老的故事所说，安东尼奥本来是一个 "矮小 "的物种，因为那个岛上的资源有限。


但是当布鲁诺，一个同种的黑龙被发现后，这一切都改变了。


齐亚伦扎。我们知道，如果你切开一个恐龙的骨架，你可以看到一些结构，这些结构与你在树环中看到的更具有可比性或类似性，所以你计算它们，你可以看到这些动物有多老。我们意识到，被命名为布鲁诺的较大的骨架在年龄上要比较小的骨架，即安东尼奥的骨架，也就是尺寸较小的那个骨架要老。


施温。安东尼奥大概有一辆小型汽车SUV的大小，但布鲁诺长了一米--更接近于一辆大型小型货车的大小。 


奇亚伦扎。因此，安东尼奥是一个完整的骨架，而布鲁诺，它是70%到75%的完整。还有一具骨架仍在地面上，等待被发现，以完全恢复和准备。而这实际上是--它的绰号是罗科，有可能比布鲁诺还要大。


Schwing: 布鲁诺和罗科的发现完全颠覆了安东尼奥的故事。而现场的其他发现也是如此。


奇亚伦扎。恐龙并不是该地区唯一的化石遗迹。我们还发现了虾类、植物。我们发现了鳄鱼。我们发现了各种恐龙，这些恐龙仍有待适当的描述，飞行爬行动物如翼龙。


施温。Chiarenza说，他还把这个地区想象成一个边缘的海洋区域。


Chiarenza。可能有更多的大陆连接，所以你会发现这个植被的海滩，周围有一点点高的地方，然后是更多的植被和森林地区，我们有点像走向欧洲大陆。你可能会看到像Tethyshadros这样的恐龙可能会在一起活动，比如说成群结队，也许会在河边喝水，你知道的。


Schwing: 该小组还收集了该地区地质的新数据。他们将岩石的年代重新确定为8000万年前，这比想象中的要早1000万年。


Chiarenza。这也使我们认为，在当时，该地区的古地理学实际上是不同的。它不是以前推测的岛屿群岛，但它实际上是一个更连续的、更大的、更延伸的陆地，可能我们不仅提供了欧洲西部和欧洲东部的连接，而且还提供了亚洲和最终非洲的连接。因此，它可能支持更多的大型动物群体，拥有更多的可用资源。

斯温。那么，在这个意大利恐龙传奇的新版本中，接下来会有什么？Chiarenza说，他特别感兴趣的是看他和同事们能从过去的气候变化中学习到什么。


奇亚伦扎。试图了解哪些物种可能对一些气候变化更敏感，并试图推断这对它们的适应性意味着什么。


施温。他说，这个故事的下一章将是分析出随着时间的推移，气候的变化是如何推动恐龙在欧洲、亚洲和世界其他地区的分布。 


60秒科学》节目，我是Emily Schwing。