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John Harris has been investigating these tar pits for the past 20 years.
John Harris過去20年中一直都在研究焦油熔池
What happened would be a horse or a ground sloth or a camel would wander along,
情況可能是一匹馬、一只地懶，或是一頭駱駝正在這里散步
and get stuck and... Just demonstrating here.
一不小心陷了進去，我來示范一下
Once it's in, it takes a great deal of strength to pull it out.
陷進去后，需要用很大力氣，才能把它拔出來
And of course if an animal gets stuck on the surface like this,
因此一旦動物陷進這種地方
when it's trying to pull out one leg, it's pushing in three others.
當它們試著拔出一條腿時，其它3條腿就會越陷越深
And so very soon it will get totally immobilized.
很快它們就動彈不了了
The trapped animal would lure predators to the swamp, who would, in turn, become stuck.
受困的動物把掠食者引來沼澤，它們也跟著一塊兒陷了進去
It would be meat on the hoof, waiting for the sabre-tooths and the dire wolves to come in and feed from it.
這是送到嘴邊的肥肉，劍齒虎和恐狼趕過來吃它們，
And they would come in and, they in turn, get stuck.
結果也跟著落入陷阱
The down would come vultures to feed for a moment and they would get stuck.
然后禿鷲也飛下來吃，它們也陷進去了
In would come the flies, and they would get stuck, too.
后來蒼蠅也過來吃尸體，它們同樣難逃厄運
In pretty short order, you'd build up the example whole food chain.
所以在短期內，這里說不定已經有了一條食物鏈
Over time, hundreds of dinosaurs would have sunk into traps.
隨著時間的推移，數百只恐龍落入了陷阱
Millions of years later, the tar and mud has turned to rock,
億萬年后，焦油和泥漿變成了巖石
the bones fossilized, and the site would look like any normal rocky bone bed.
骨骼變成了化石，這里也就成了很普通的化石場
If Currie's dig site was actually a prehistoric predator trap,
如果Currie的挖掘地點是一個史前掠食動物陷阱
it would destroy his theory that the tyrannosaurs lived and hunted in packs.
那將全盤否定他關于暴龍是集體生活和狩獵的觀點
But how could the paleontologists tell?
那么，古生物學家又是如何解釋的呢
