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It's very hard to imagine just the scale of the volcanism which starts off at this time.
當時的火山爆發規模大到無法想象的地步
It's vastly greater, several orders of magnitude greater, than anything we see on earth today.
它太劇烈了，級別比當今地球上任何一次火山爆發都要高得多
Thousands of square kilometres of, of red hot lava just pouring out of these fissures in the ground covering a vast area.
數千平方公里的熾熱熔巖從裂縫中噴涌上來，覆蓋了大片地表
And it wasn't just the lava. These eruptions had pumped out millions of tons of poisonous gases.
而且不只是熔巖。火山爆發還噴出了數百萬噸有毒氣體
The theory was that these gases had effectively suffocated life in the oceans.
科學家們認為這些氣體將使海洋生物窒息
Paradoxically, all this death could have been the dinosaurs big evolutionary break
反過來說，這些死亡可能正是恐龍偉大進化歷程的開始
because it's a well known evolutionary theory that mass extinctions can have a dramatic effect on evolution.
因為根據眾所周知的進化論，大滅絕能對進化產生戲劇性的作用
Extinction events are obviously bad news for the things that are around at the time,
滅絕事件對于當時那些生物來說無疑是噩夢
but in a way evolution's able to experiment quite a lot at this time
但是從某種程度上，進化能在那個時候進行大量嘗試
because there's less sort of competition going on at these moments of time
因為當時競爭之類的因素少了很多
and you often get the sort of major innovations and new, new groups start appearing in the aftermath of extinction events.
而大批新生物種，新生群落就會在大滅絕之后紛紛出現
So could a mass extinction have been responsible for the transformation of the dinosaurs in the mid-Jurassic?
那么，大滅絕真的會導致恐龍在中侏羅世發生劇變嗎
It would have created a world free of competition allowing the survivors to evolve into all the new types of dinosaur.
它創造了一個沒有競爭的世界，幸存者們得以在此進化成各種新型恐龍。
