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聽力文本Recording 27
錄音27
Good morning, everyone. My name is John and I'm a palaeontologist.
大家早上好，我叫約翰，我是個古生物學家。
Now, when most people hear that, they immediately get an image of an old professor studying dried-up dinosaur bones or else they think of a great adventurer from the movies!
當絕大多數人聽到這句話時，他們腦海里馬上浮現出一個景象：一位老教授在研究干癟的恐龍骨頭，或者有些人會認為這是電影里才有的冒險家。
Well, I'm neither. But I would like to talk to you today about how I came to he a palaeontologist and the reason I believe it is an important job.
我兩者都不是。但今天我想告訴你們我是怎么成為一個古生物學家的，以及我認為這項工作很重要的原因。
All my life, my main interest has been the environment. So, I actually started out as an ecology student.
我的一生中，主要的興趣都集中在環境方面。所以，我其實一開始是生態學系的學生。
As a part of my degree course, I had to do a compulsory unit on extinction and a lecturer visiting from another university gave us a talk on Australia's extinct animals.
作為我學位課程的一部分，我必須修讀一節動物滅絕方面的必修課，一位來自其它大學的講師來訪問，給我們講了澳大利亞的絕種動物。
One of the animals he talked about was called the Diprotodon. It's an ancestor of the modern Australian wombat.
他講到的其中一種動物叫巨型袋鼠。這是現代澳大利亞袋熊的祖先。
He described this enormous animal crossing ancient lakes, getting stuck in the mud and becoming part of the fossil record, which is what we call the preserved remains of animals and plants that we find.
他描述了這只巨型動物穿過古老的湖泊，困在了淤泥中，變成了化石的一部分，我們稱之為發現的動植物保存下來的遺跡。
And I was fascinated, so fascinated that I immediately changed courses.
我深深對此著迷，太著迷了，以至于我馬上就轉換了課程。
But palaeontology isn't all easy going.
但古生物學并不是那么容易的。
The very first field trip I went on was pretty awful.
我的第一次實地考察就糟糕透了。
We went to an outback fossil site and we were digging in extreme conditions.
我們去了內地一處化石遺址，我們在極端條件下進行挖掘。
I've learned since then that that's pretty standard for work like this.
自此之后，我明白了，這樣的工作是再平常不過的。
But to make matters worse, after five days, I'd found nothing.
但更糟糕的是，五天以后，我什么都沒找到。
I was getting really disheartened and I was starling to regret my decision, when on the last day of the trip, I was digging into the bank of an ancient dried-up riverbed and I found a funny—looking piece of rock.
我備受打擊，開始后悔自己的決定了，（誰知）在考察的最后一天，我在挖掘一處古老的河床河岸，我找到了一塊長得很奇怪的石頭。
Inside it was a tooth from a giant kangaroo. Finding that one Fossil made me realise that this was a field I really wanted to continue working in.
在石頭里面是一只巨型袋鼠的牙齒。找到了這一塊化石，讓我明白了，這是一個我想一直工作下去的領域。
