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Science & technology
科技板塊
A fossil feast
化石盛宴
The print edition contains a picture which shows part of the oldest known mayfly swarm.
印刷版中有一張照片，展示了已知的最古老的蜉蝣群的一部分。
It was collected, by a team led by Zhang Qianqi of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, from a site near Hezhou, in southern China, and is reported in the latest edition of Geology.
它是由南京地質古生物研究所的張前旗領導的一個團隊從中國南方賀州附近的一個地點收集的，發表在最新一期的《地質學》刊物上。
Some 180m years ago, during the early part of the Jurassic period, this site was a lake where mayflies lived and swarmed to mate, as they do today, providing, as a side-effect, a feast for local insectivores.
大約1.8億年前，在侏羅紀早期，這個地方是一個湖泊，蜉蝣生活在那里，成群交配，就像今天一樣，同時也為當地的食蟲動物提供了一場盛宴。
These probably included small pterosaurs, but not birds, which had not yet evolved.
其中可能包括小型翼龍，但不包括尚未進化的鳥類。
Insects rarely fossilise well in rock (though they do in amber), but in this case exquisite anatomical details of the creatures are visible in the mudstone that has solidified from the lake’s sediments.
昆蟲很少能在巖石中很好地形成化石(盡管它們在琥珀中可以)，在由湖泊沉積物凝固而成的泥巖中，人們可以看到這些生物精致的解剖細節。
