Working alone in the lab on the morning I passed through was a cheerfully grizzled-looking fellow in a blue work shirt whom I recognized as Mike Voorhies from a BBC television documentary in which he featured. They don't get a huge number of visitors to Ashfall Fossil Beds State Park—it's slightly in the middle of nowhere—and Voorhies seemed pleased to show me around. He took me to the spot atop a twenty-foot ravine where he had made his find.
一天上午，我從里面經(jīng)過，只見一個(gè)身穿藍(lán)色工作服、頭發(fā)灰白的人獨(dú)自在實(shí)驗(yàn)室里忙碌。我認(rèn)出他就是主持過英國廣播公司一部《地平線》記錄片的邁克·沃里斯。州立阿什福爾化石床公園多少位于一個(gè)四周不著邊際的地方，因此游客不算太多。沃里斯似乎很高興帶著我到各處轉(zhuǎn)轉(zhuǎn)。他還把我領(lǐng)到那6米深的隘口之頂，看一眼他的發(fā)現(xiàn)現(xiàn)場。
It was a dumb place to look for bones, he said happily. "But I wasn't looking for bones. I was thinking of making a geological map of eastern Nebraska at the time, and really just kind of poking around. If I hadn't gone up this ravine or the rains hadn't just washed out that skull, I'd have walked on by and this would never have been found." He indicated a roofed enclosure nearby, which had become the main excavation site. Some two hundred animals had been found lying together in a jumble.
“到這樣的地方來找骨頭是一件蠢事，”他快活地說，“不過，我不是在找骨頭。當(dāng)時(shí)，我在考慮繪制一幅東內(nèi)布拉斯加的地質(zhì)圖，實(shí)際上只是在這一帶到處走走。要是我沒有爬上這個(gè)隘口，要是大雨沒有把那塊頭骨沖到外面，我會(huì)徑直走過去，根本不會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)這玩意兒。”他指了指近處一個(gè)帶遮棚的地方，那里曾是主要發(fā)掘現(xiàn)場。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)大約有200頭動(dòng)物橫七豎八地躺在一起。
I asked him in what way it was a dumb place to hunt for bones. "Well, if you're looking for bones, you really need exposed rock. That's why most paleontology is done in hot, dry places. It's not that there are more bones there. It's just that you have some chance of spotting them. In a setting like this"—he made a sweeping gesture across the vast and unvarying prairie— "you wouldn't know where to begin. There could be really magnificent stuff out there, but there's no surface clues to show you where to start looking."
我問他為什么說到這樣的地方來找骨頭是一件蠢事?！鞍パ剑胝业焦穷^，就得有暴露在外面的巖石。因此，大多數(shù)古生物學(xué)的工作是在炎熱、干燥的地方完成的。倒不是因?yàn)槟抢锏墓穷^多，而是因?yàn)榘l(fā)現(xiàn)骨頭的可能性大。在這種地方，”他把手朝那廣闊無垠的草原一揮，“你簡直無從下手。那里可能確有了不起的東西，但地面上沒有任何線索來指點(diǎn)你從哪兒開始尋找。”
At first they thought the animals were buried alive, and Voorhies stated as much in a National Geographic article in 1981.
起先，他們認(rèn)為那些動(dòng)物是被活埋在里面的，沃里斯1981年在《國家地理雜志》的一篇文章里就是那么闡述的。
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