Wild Europe - Genesis 肇始之初- 6

Parts of Pangaea were periodically flooded by shallow seas. But time and again this water evaporated, leaving layer upon layer of salt. Today these massive deposits lie buried deep beneath the Netherlands, Poland, Northern England and the Austrian Alps. They've been mined for millennia. Salt is a major ingredient for the chemical industry. It's also used, albeit controversially, to deice Europe's roads in winter, thousand of tons a day.

This particular mine, in Krakow in Poland, is made up of over 300 kilometers of tunnels. It’s so vast that miners have carved an entire underground cathedral out of the salt, even the chandeliers.

After tens of millions of years of baking under the desert sun, Europe changed once again. This is the Jura in Eastern France. The slopes here are blessed with fertile well-drained soils, perfect for vineyards. And scattered among the vines are clues to the next waves of change that began to sweep across Europe some 200 million years ago.

A fossil ammonite, a marine creature, and mussels, even the ancient relatives of squid. This area was once under the sea. These waters teemed with life. As well as ammonites , marine reptiles called Ichthyosaurs were common. They fed on fish, breathed air, and gave birth to life young. They were the dolphins of their time. All these creatures swam where there are now thousands of vines. And it's this region of France that has lent its name to one of the most familiar periods in the earth's history.

words and expressions

millennia:millennium的復(fù)數(shù), 一千年

albeit:conj.雖然
eg:Albeit fair, she was not sought after.
盡管她很美,可沒有人追求她。

chandelier: A branched, decorative lighting fixture that holds a number of bulbs or candles and is suspended from a ceiling樹枝形的裝飾燈

be blessed with: 在...方面有福氣,幸運(yùn)地享有

ammonite:The coiled, flat, chambered fossil shell of an extinct cephalopod mollusk that was abundant in the Cretaceous Period.菊石

mussel: marine or freshwater bivalve mollusk that lives attached to rocks etc.貽貝, 蚌類

squid :widely distributed fast-moving ten-armed cephalopod mollusk having a long tapered body with triangular tail fins魷魚, 烏賊

Ichthyosaur:any of several marine reptiles of the Mesozoic having a body like a porpoise with dorsal and tail fins and paddle-shaped limbs魚龍