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Fossil plants. By finding them alongside Devonian tetrapods Daeschler had made a vital breakthrough.
植物化石。把它們和泥盆紀四足動物放在一起，Daeschler有了一個重大的突破
He could now reconstruct for the very first time the true environment in which the first tetrapods had evolved.
現在他能第一次重建早期四足動物進化的真實環境
The Devonian wasn't the barren, treeless landscape spoken of in textbooks.
泥盆紀并非教科書中所寫的那樣荒涼一片、寸草不生
It was more like a rainforest.
卻是和熱帶雨林一樣
The most common thing we're finding is a tree-like plant. It actually has a long, tall trunk
我們發現的最多的是像樹一樣的植物，它們都有高大的枝干
and some people say these got up to 30m tall, so these were truly the first canopy sort of producing plants.
有人說它們能長到30米高，所以這些確實就是最早具有樹冠的植物
We also find fern-like plants and a variety of other things and so we're really seeing a diversity
我們也發現了類似蕨類的植物和其它各種植物，可見諸如紅丘這樣的地方物種極其繁多
from a site like Red Hill and I think it's important because it's showing us that these were actually complex environments.
我認為它很重要，因為它向我們展示了一個相當復雜的生態環境
The textbooks had got it wrong again. The Earth may once have been barren,
教科書又一次錯了，地球也許曾一度荒蕪
but by the end of the Devonian it was very, very wet and densely forested with huge permanent rivers.
但到了泥盆紀末期，地表已變得異常濕潤，森林茂密，大河長流
These were bordered by something completely new: swamp, that grey area between land and water.
分布著全新的生態環境——沼澤，陸地和水域之間的灰色地帶
The first tetrapods had evolved in this wholly new eco-system,
最早的四足動物正是在這種全新的生態系統中進化
precisely the kind of thing that could indeed be a spur to major evolutionary change.
而恰好也是它激發了重要的進化過程。
