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What's a Fly Doing in Antarctica?
南極有蒼蠅？
Sometimes the biggest finds are the smallest finds. Researchers examining a segment of siltstone taken from ground along the Beardmore glacier in Antarctica found something unexpected. They found a fly.
有時候，重大發(fā)現(xiàn)源于很小的發(fā)現(xiàn)。研究人員在南極比爾德莫爾冰川采集回來的一塊粉砂巖中意外地發(fā)現(xiàn)了蒼蠅。
Well, not exactly a fly. They found a fly fossil–it's a segment of the exoskeleton, the protective shell, of a fly larva. While the larvae are still growing, they are protected by a thin shell. And where there's larval shell, there are flies. So what are flies doing in Antarctica? It's much too cold there for flies. And the closest fly-friendly location, South America, is thousands of miles away.
準確地說，不是蒼蠅，而是蒼蠅的化石。一塊保護幼蟲的外骨骼。在薄殼的保護下，幼蟲還在發(fā)育。幼蟲的蛹殼證明了蒼蠅的存在。那么，蒼蠅怎么會在南極呢？南極冰冷的氣候不適宜蒼蠅生長啊！反而，最適宜蒼蠅生存的地方——南非，卻遠在幾千里之外。
Part of the answer is that the fly fossil is ancient–it was found with a number of other fossilized things that have been dated between three million and seventeen million years old. It's possible that the fly lived during a period when sea levels were much lower there than they now are. Lower sea levels means wider continents –think of standing on the edge of a beach and having the water pull back. And wider continents means it's more likely that living things might travel across the gap.
正解可能是因為這塊蒼蠅的化石和一起發(fā)現(xiàn)的其它化石可以追溯到300萬到700萬年前了。很可能，蒼蠅生長的那個時期，海水沒有現(xiàn)在那么高，這意味著陸地面積更大。想象自己站在海邊，浪打回來。廣闊的陸地面積讓生物更有可能跨越于大陸間。
Or maybe not. Maybe flies are much older than anyone thought. We know that what we now call Antarctica was once connected to both South America and Australia. But that was around eighty million years ago, and flies aren't thought to be that old.
另種可能是蒼蠅在地球上生存的時間比我們想象的還要久遠。要知道，現(xiàn)在的南極曾經(jīng)和南美大陸及澳大利亞大陸是接壤的。但這也是8000萬年前的事了，那時候，蒼蠅已經(jīng)在地球上了？
Whatever the answer is, something in our understanding of the continents, the seas, or fly evolution has to be fixed. That's one of the best things about science–a really big change can come from the discovery of something really small.
不管答案究竟是什么，我們所認識的大陸、海洋、蒼蠅進化的常識之一要得以修正。這就是科學的妙處，一個小小的發(fā)現(xiàn)或許能推翻重大定論。
