評論
打印
The very earliest tetrapods did not, as all the textbooks claimed, have five fingers after all.
最早的四足動物并不像所有教科書中記載的那樣，長著5個趾頭
It suddenly raised the question: if the most basic assumption behind the previous 100 years' research was wrong
這立刻引出了這樣一個問題：若是連100多年來探尋背后的最基本假設都不正確
then what else might be wrong?
那么是不是還有別的錯誤呢
Until that day I had assumed, like everyone else, that five was the primitive number of digits for a tetrapod limb.
在此之前，我和其他人一樣，也認為四足動物足趾的最初數量是5根
The old explanations for the origin of the structure,
原來的那些關于結構的起源的說法，
after all one of the most fundamental and defining structures of being a tetrapod,
成為四足動物的最基本的結構定義
and in our own way of being human, was in the bin.
還有我們成為人類的過程，都變成了空談
Scientists now believe our earliest ancestors with legs
科學家們如今認為，我們最早長出腿的祖先
must have started out life with numerous digits and then evolution reduced them to five
一開始可能依賴多根趾頭生活，后來進化才把它們減少為5根
over the aeons that followed and the shocks just kept getting bigger.
這一特征世代相傳，而影響范圍也越來越廣
Another fundamental assumption, that we had evolved legs for the express purpose of walking, just could not be true.
另一種基本假設——我們進化出腿的直接目的是為了行走，也可能將不成立。
