Sixty-five million years ago, a very important and catastrophic event changed the course of life on land. And although we know that the land animals I'm going to talk about are just the scum of the Earth on the land -- the little bits of land floating around -- but they are important to us because they're sort of in our scale of experience from millimeters to meters. And these animals disappeared, and a separate life, mammals, radiated out to take their place. And so, we know this in extraordinary detail. And so this is a core from near Bermuda. We know that the tsunamis, the earthquakes, and the things that we've experienced in the entire record of humankind history can't really quite get around the kind of disaster that this represented for the Earth.
6500万年前,一场非常重要的 大灾难 改变了陆地生命的进化历程。 下面我要讲到的陆地动物 虽然只是在漫长的进化历程中昙花一现, 对我们来说,却有着深远的意义。 因为它们是我们经验逐步累积中的一部分。 然而这些动物突然都消失了, 另一种新的生命形式,哺乳动物 逐渐繁荣起来,并取代了它们。我们对这一点 非常了解。因此,这是揭开谜团的重要线索。 我们知道像海啸、地震 和我们整个人类历史上 所经历的其他一切灾难 在我们居住的地球上 都是不可避免的。
So even before that impact was known, even before scientists in general came to an agreement over the theory of evolution, scientists and natural historians of all kinds of stripes actually had divided Earth's life's history into these two episodes: Mesozoic, the middle life, and the Cenozoic, the recent life. And as it turns out, it actually corresponds really nicely with geologic history. So we have a Mesozoic period, an age of fragmentation, and a Cenozoic period, an age of reconnection -- South America to North America, India to Asia. And so my work, really, is trying to understand the character of that Mesozoic radiation compared to the Cenozoic radiation to see what mysteries we can understand from dinosaurs and from other animals about what life on drifting continents really can tell us about evolution.
所以,在提出慧地大碰撞理论之前, 甚至在大多数科学家承认 进化论之前, 不同领域的科学家和自然学家们 事实上早就把地球的历史 划分为以下两个阶段: 中生代和新生代。 而事实则很好的证明了这样的划分 和我们的地质历史相当吻合。 中生代是各大地质板块 分裂的时期, 而新生代则是各板块合并的时期-- 像南美和北美,印度和亚洲的合并。 所以我的工作是试着找出 中生代和新生代时期 各生活着什么样的生物, 然后看看是否能从恐龙和其它动物上 找到关于大陆漂移过程中 生物进化的奥秘。
The work immediately begs the question, "Why didn't they go into the waters?" I mean, certainly mammals did. This is one example. You can go outside -- see many other examples. Within five, 10 million years of the bolide impact we had a whole variety of animals going into the water. Why didn't they do that? Why didn't they hang around in trees at good size, and why didn't they burrow? Why didn't they do all these things, and if they didn't do all these things, what kinds of animals were in those spaces? And if there were no animals in those spaces, what does that tell us about, you know, how evolution works on land? Really interesting questions. I think a lot of it has to do with body size. In fact, I think that most of it has to do with body size -- the size you are when you inherit a vacant ecospace from whatever natural disaster.
但问题很快就来了, “为什么恐龙们不生活在水里呢?” 举个例子,哺乳动物过去是生活在水中的。 你可以到外面看看,有很多这样的例子。 被火流星攻击了500到1000万年, 我们有大量的动物改为去水中生活了。而恐龙为什么不这样做呢? 为什么恐龙都没有生活在树上呢? 为什么它们不去挖洞? 为什么它们都不做我提到的这些事呢?如果它们不生活在这些地方, 有哪些动物会生活在那里呢? 如果没有动物生活在除了水之外的其它地方,这能告诉我们 关于生物进化的什么秘密呢? 这是非常有趣的问题。我认为这许多跟体型有关。 事实上,大多数都跟体型有一定的关系-- 无论何种自然灾害之后, 那空荡的自然环境 决定了它们的体型。
Looking at dinosaur evolution and studying it, digging it up for many years, I end up looking at the mammal radiation, and it seems as though everything is quick time, just like technology, advancing by an order of magnitude. Dinosaur evolution proceeded at a stately pace, an order of magnitude slower on any way you want to measure it. You want to measure it by diversity? You want to measure it by the time it took to reach maximum body size? Yes, they do have larger body size, but many of them are smaller, but we're interested in the time it took them to achieve that. Fifty million years to achieve this maximum body size. And that is 10 times longer than it took the mammals to achieve maximum body size and invade all those habitats.
深入研究恐龙进化史 并亲自参与现场挖掘很多年之后, 我转向了对哺乳动物种类的研究, 结果似乎是所有的事物都转瞬即逝, 就像技术要朝着更先进的方向发展一样。 但恐龙却迈着庄严谨慎的进化脚步前进, 这样的进化方式比我们想象得要慢很多。 你要以生物多样性来测量吗? 或者你要以 它们进化到最大体型所需的时间来衡量? 是的,它们有过比较大的体型, 但绝大多数体型是比较小的, 然而我们感兴趣的是这些恐龙用了多长时间才变得这么大的。 5000万年。 而哺乳动物只花了500万年就 进化到了最大的体型 并且在恐龙原栖息上繁衍生息。
So there's lessons to learn, and there's lessons to learn from the exception, the exception that we know very well today from the discoveries we've made, and many other scholars have made around the world. This slide was shown before. This is the famous Jurassic bird Archaeopteryx. We now know this transition is the one time that dinosaurs actually went below that body size -- we're going to see where they began in a minute -- and it is the one time that they rapidly invaded all the habitats I just told you that dinosaurs weren't in. They became marine. We now know them today from the ice caps. There's burrowing birds. They inhabit the trees at all body sizes, and, of course, they inhabit the land.
所以我们要吸取很多教训, 而这些教训都来自于一个特例。 这个特例我们今天很熟悉,是因为世界各地的学者和我们 到目前为止所做的各种发现。 这张幻灯片以前也展示过,是著名的侏罗纪始祖鸟。 我们现在知道这个转变 是在恐龙逐渐变小的过程中 开始的。 接下去我们要讨论它们是从哪里开始的。 正是那个时期,它们迅速地 繁衍生息。 我刚才说过恐龙们是不去水中生活的。 这些鸟转移到了海洋里。我们今天是从 冰盖研究中得知的。 这些是穴居鸟。 不管何种体型,它们都可以呆在树上, 当然,也生活在陆地上。
So we were the first to actually name a bird from the famous series that later exploded onto the pages of Science and Nature. We called this bird Sinornis. It's a little bit more advanced than Archaeopteryx, and if you go to different layers, you find things that are less advanced than Archaeopteryx, and every grade in between, so that if you find something today, we're usually splitting hairs -- or, more appropriately, feathers -- as to decide whether it's actually a non-avian or an avian. It is the greatest transition that we have, actually, on land from one habitat to another, bar none, to understand how a bony, fairly heavy, kilogram or a couple-of-kilogram animal could make such a transition. It is really our greatest -- one of our greatest -- evolutionary sequences.
事实上,后来在《科学》和《自然》杂志上 频繁刊登的这种鸟是我们命名的。 我们叫它中国鸟。它比始祖鸟要更高等一些。 如果你分析不同的地层,就会发现 每往下一层,生物就更低等。 所以今天如果你发现了新的化石,我们通常是去分析它的毛发, 或更恰当地说是羽毛 来决定它是否属于鸟类。 这事实上是陆地上从一个栖息地到另一个上的 最重要的转变, 无一例外, 这也为有骨架的, 有厚重羽毛的,几公斤重的动物是怎样进化的 提供了一定的线索。 这是我们进化历程上最重要的事件之一。
Now, my work began at the beginning. I thought if I'm going to understand dinosaur evolution, I'd have to go back to those beds where they had picked up fragments, go back to a time and a place where the earliest dinosaurs existed. I'd like to call for this little video clip to give you some idea of, sort of, what we face. Normally, we get asked a lot of questions: "Well, how do you find fossils in areas that look like this?" If we could roll that first video clip. This is sort of a nice helicopter ride through those early beds, and they're located in Northeastern Argentina. And we're coming over a cliff, and at the top of that cliff, dinosaurs had basically taken over. At the bottom of the cliff, we find that they're rare as hens' teeth. That's where dinosaur origins is to be found: at the bottom of the cliff.
现在,我的工作是从头开始。 我想如果我要去了解恐龙是怎样进化的, 我不得不回到那些远古地层, 因为古生物学家在那里发现了恐龙的碎片,那是恐龙 曾经生活过的时代和地方。 我想在这里给大家放一小段录像, 让大家对我们所面对的东西有一点了解。通常,大家会问很多问题, 例如,“你们是怎样在这片地区找到化石的?” 我们回放一下第一段录像。 这架看起来不错的直升机 自由穿行在那些古老的峡谷中, 这个地方是阿根廷的东北地区。 我们正经过峡谷的上方,这些峡谷的顶端 是恐龙曾经生活过的地方。 在峡谷的底部,我们几乎发现不了恐龙化石。 而在那里我们发现了最原始的恐龙化石。
You go into an area like this, you get a geologic map, you get a topographic map, and the best, most-inspired team you can bring to the area. And the rest is up to you. You've got to find fossils. You've got to dig a hole that's usually quite a bit bigger than that to get it out; you've got to climb those cliffs and find, really, everything that existed -- not just the dinosaurs, but the entire story. If you're lucky, and you dig a place like that, you actually find the ash bed to dig it, and we did. 228 million years old, we found what really is the most primitive dinosaur: that's the Ur-dinosaur. A three-and-a-half foot thing, beautiful skull, predator, meat-eater, a two-legged animal. So, all the other dinosaurs that you know, or your kids know, at least, on four legs. This is sort of a look at the skull, and it's an absolutely fantastic thing about five or six inches long. It looks rather bird-like because it is. It's bird-like and hollow. A predator. Maybe 25 pounds, or 10 kilograms. That's where dinosaurs began. That's where the radiation began. That is 10 times larger than the mammal radiation, which was a four-legged radiation. We are extremely dinosaur-like, and unusual in our two-legged approach to life.
在这样的地区你需要一张地质图, 或者说一张地形图, 最重要的是有一支最棒的队伍跟着你。 最后就靠我们自己了。我们得找到恐龙化石。 你得挖一个比这稍大一点的洞 才能把它挖出来;你还得爬上这些峡谷 挖出任何一样有研究价值的东西, 不仅仅是恐龙化石,而是整个史前故事。如果你够幸运, 并且找到了这样的一个地方, 你就去挖吧,事实上,我们就是这么做的。 我们发现了一具有2亿2800万年的 最原始的恐龙骨架: 这就是尔恐龙. 3英尺半高(1米左右), 有着一个迷人头骨的掠食者, 也就是食肉恐龙,两足行走。 然而,你或你的孩子记忆当中的其它恐龙 至少是有四条腿的。 来看一下这个头骨, 5到6英寸长,非常漂亮。 它看起来像鸟的头骨,事实上的确这样。 它有着像鸟一样的头骨,并且是空心的。 它是掠食者,大概有25磅, 也就是10公斤。 这就是恐龙的起源,然后逐渐地分散到各个地方去。 这比哺乳动物,也就是四足动物 要大10倍。 我们和恐龙是非常相像的, 只不过我们是两足动物。
Now, if you want to understand what happened then when the continents broke apart, and dinosaurs found -- landlubbers, as they are -- found themselves adrift. There's some missing puzzle pieces. Most of those missing puzzle pieces are southern continents, because it was those continents that are least explored. If you want to add to this picture and try and sketch it globally, you really have to force yourself to go down to the four corners of the Earth -- Africa, India, Antarctica, Australia -- and start putting together some of these pieces. I've been to some of those continents, but Africa was, in the words of Steven Pinker, was a blank slate, largely. But one with an immense chalkboard in the middle, with lots of little areas of dinosaur rock if you could survive an expedition.
如果你想知道远古大陆分裂后 发生了什么, 为什么恐龙被发现时是 四分五裂的,我们还需要其他一些关键证据。 而大都数这些证据在南半球的大陆上, 那里人类的足迹几乎没有。 如果你想为这个画增添些什么,为了使它更完美一点, 你就必须走遍 地球的各个角落-- 非洲、印度、南极洲、澳大利亚-- 并且试着开始找出最终答案。 我曾经到过其中的一些大陆,只是非洲在 史蒂芬·品克的描述中,很大程度上是一块白板, 但中间是一大块黑板, 那里有很多埋藏恐龙化石的一片片地区, 条件是你能在探险后幸存下来。
There's no roads into the Sahara. It's an enormous place. To be able to excavate the 80 tons of dinosaurs that we have in the Sahara and take them out, you really have to put together an expedition team that can handle the conditions. Some of them are political. Many of them are physical. Some of them -- the most important -- are mental. And you really have to be able to withstand conditions -- you have to drive into the desert, you will see landscapes in many cases -- you can see from what we've discovered -- that nobody else has ever seen. And the kinds of teams they bring in? Well, they're composed of people who understand science as adventure with a purpose. They're usually students who've never seen a desert. Some of them are more experienced.
没有路通往沙哈拉沙漠,那是个无边无际的地方。 如果要把 80吨重的沙哈拉沙漠恐龙化石 搬出去,你就必须有一支能 克服任何困难的探险队伍。 这些困难当中,其中一些是政治原因,很多是身体上的, 再有一些,也是最重要的,是精神上的。 你要能承受各种各样的恶劣条件-- 你不得不驱车进入沙漠腹地, 那里你可以看到形态各异的沙漠景观-- 你可以见到我们所发现的各种化石-- 而其他人却不能。 有人会问你们的队伍是由哪些人组成的? 他们是有 一群 懂得科学精神的人组成,而这个精神就是有目的性的探险。 队伍成员通常是一群没有去过沙漠的学生。 其中一些学生则相对经验丰富些。
Your job as a leader -- this is definitely a team sport -- your job as a leader is to try to inspire them to do more work than they've ever done in their life under conditions that they can't imagine. So, 125 degrees is normal. The ground surface at 150 -- typical. So, you can't leave your normal metal tools out because you'll get a first-degree burn if you grab them sometimes. So, you are finding yourself also in an amazing cultural milieu. You're really rubbing shoulders with the world's last great nomadic people. These are the Tuareg nomads, and they're living their lives much as they have for centuries. Your job is to excavate things like this in the foreground, and make them enter the pages of history. To do that, you've got to actually transport them thousands of miles out of the desert.
作为领队--这可以说是一个团队运动-- 你必须试图激励他们 在这样的严酷条件下 做比生活中所能承受的更多的事。 所以,125华氏度(52摄氏度)很正常。 而地表通常可以达到66摄氏度。 因此,你最好不要把金属工具放在太阳底下, 否则如果不小心碰到它们,就会被烫得很严重。 你也会发现自己正沉浸在某一文化环境之中, 和世界上仅存的 伟大游牧民族打交道。 他们是图阿雷格游牧民族,在撒哈拉地区 生活了几百年。 你的工作就是把这些挖掘出来, 然后把它记录在册。 要做到这一点,你需要把这些从沙漠运到 几千英里之外的另一个地方。
We're talking about Ethiopia, but let's talk about Niger -- or Niger, in our English language -- north of Nigeria -- that's where this photograph was taken. Basically you're talking about a country that, when we started working there, did not have container traffic. You transported the bones out yourself to the coast of Africa, onto a boat, if you wanted to get them out of the middle of the Sahara. That's a 2,000 mile journey. So enormous excavations and a lot of work, and out of essentially a partial herd of dinosaurs that you saw buried there -- 20 tons of material -- we erect Jobaria, a sauropod dinosaur like we haven't seen on some other continents. It really is a little bit out of place temporally. It looks nothing like what we would find if we dug in contemporary beds in North America. Here's the animal that was causing it trouble.
我们现在说的是埃塞俄比亚,但接下来要谈的是-- 尼日尔--尼日尔北部地区-- 在那里我们拍到了这张照片。 当我们开始工作时, 尼日尔基本上没有集装箱运输车。 你得自己把这些化石运到 非洲海岸, 然后再搬上船,才能把它们运出沙哈拉中部地区。 这有2000英里的路程。 在大量的挖掘工作之后, 我们利用埋藏在那里的 一部分重要恐龙骨架--大约有20吨-- 安装了约巴龙, 这是一种我们在其他大陆上没有见到过的蜥脚类龙, 看起来暂时跟周围环境有点不搭。 它和我们如今在北美岩层中 所找到的化石一点也不同。 这是一头给食草恐龙带来惊慌的恐龙。
And, you know, on and on -- a whole menagerie. When you pick up something like this -- and some of you have had the chance to touch it -- this is a piece of history. You're touching something that's 110 million years old. This is a thumb claw. There it was, moments after it was discovered. It is an incredible view of life, and it really began when we began to understand the depth of time. It's only been with us for less than a century, and in that time, that fourth dimension, when radioactive dating came about, less than a century ago, and we could actually tell how old some of these things were, is probably the most profound transformation, because it changes the way we look at ourselves and the world dramatically. When you pick up a piece of history like that, I think it can transform kids that are possibly interested in science.
你知道,逐渐地我们就有了这么一个 庞大的动物园。当你捡起这样的东西时-- 一些人曾经可能接触过类似的东西-- 这就是一段历史,距今已有1亿1000万年了。 这是拇指爪,在这个恐龙化石发现后不久就发现了它。 多么不可思议的生命, 当我们开始思考时间深度时 它就开始了。 它的历史不超过百年, 在那时, 不到一个世纪之前,放射性测年技术的发明 使我们能测得这些化石的年龄, 这是一项深远的变革, 它改变了我们看待自己和世界的 方式方法。 当你了解这些化石的背后故事后, 我想这些历史能转变 对科学有可能产生兴趣学生的态度。
That's the animal that thumb claw came from: Suchomimus. Here's some others. This is something we found in Morocco, an immense animal. We prototyped by CAT-scanning the brain out of this animal. It turns out to have a forebrain one-fifteenth the size of a human. This was the cover of Science, because they thought that humans were more intelligent than these animals, but we can see by some in our administration that despite the enormous advantage in brain volume some of the attitudes remain the same. Anyway, smaller raptors. All the stuff from Jurassic Park that you know of -- all those small animals -- they all come from northern continents. This is the first skeleton from a southern continent, and guess what? You start preparing it. It has no big claw on its hind foot. It doesn't look like a Velociraptor. It's really a wholly separate radiation. So what we're trying to piece together here is a story. It involves flying reptiles like this Pterosaur that we reconstructed from Africa.
这是似鳄龙的拇指爪。 这还有其它一些。 这是我们在摩洛哥发现的庞然大物。 我们用CAT扫描了它的头骨,并制作了头骨原型。 它的前脑容量 只有人类的十五分之一。 这是《科学》杂志的封面,有人认为 人类比这些动物更有智慧, 但我们从行政机构的一些例子中可以看出 尽管 人类在脑容量上占上风, 但是我们和它们的一些态度相似。总之, 我们人类是小型掠食者。 《侏罗纪公园》这部电影中你所知道的一切-- 所有的那些小型动物-- 它们都生活在各个大陆的北部地区。 这是第一具来自某个大陆南方的骨架, 猜怎么着? 它的后脚没有大型爪子,看起来不像迅猛龙。 很明显,它是一个新的种类。 所以我们正在尽力还原当初的情况, 包括会飞的爬行动物, 像这只我们在非洲重新复原的翼龙。
Crocodiles, of course, and that's a nasty one we haven't named yet. And huge things -- I mean, this is a lower jaw just laying there in the desert of this enormous crocodile. The crocodile is technically called Sarcosuchus. That's an adult Orinoco crocodile in its jaws. We had to try and reconstruct this. We had to actually look at recent crocodiles to understand how crocodiles scale. Could I have the second little video clip? Now, this field is just -- and, of course, science in general -- is just -- adventure. We had to find and measure the largest crocodiles living today.
当然还有鳄鱼。 我们还没有给这条可怕的鳄鱼取个名字, 然人惊叹的是 这条巨鳄的下颌骨 正躺在沙漠之中。 学术上我们称它为帝王鳄。 从颌骨来看,这是一条成年奥里诺科鳄鱼。 我们竭尽全力想把它复原, 所以只有和现在的鳄鱼作比较之后, 才能知道鳄鱼身体的比例是怎样的。 马上来放一下第二个短片。 一般来说,这是一种科学,但更确切地说是探险。 我们得找出当今体型最大的鳄鱼, 并测量它的一些数据。
Narrator: ... as long as their boat.
旁白:只要他们的船......
Man: Look at that set of choppers! Yeah, he's a big one.
第一个人:快看那排牙齿!它可真大。
Narrator: If they can just land it, this croc will provide useful data, helping Paul in his quest to understand Sarcosuchus.
旁白:如果他们能把它拖上岸, 这条鳄鱼就能提供一些有用的数据 来帮助保罗能更好地复原帝王鳄。
Man: OK, hand me some more here. Man 2: OK.
第一个人:我需要更多的人手。第二个人:我来了。
Narrator: It falls to Paul to cover its eyes.
旁白:由保罗来盖住它的眼睛。
Man: Watch out! Watch out! No, no, no, no. You're going to have to get on the back legs.
第一个人:小心!小心!不,不,不,你去把它的后腿按住。
Man: I got the back legs.
第一个人:我按住了。
Man 2: You have the back legs? No, you have the front legs, my friend. I've got it. I've got the back legs. Somebody get the front legs.
第二个人:你真的按住了吗?不,你压的是前腿,我的老兄。 现在好了,肯定没错。 快来人把前腿按住。
Paul Sereno: Let's get this tape measure on him. Put it right there. Wow. Sixty-five. Wow. That's a big skull.
保罗·塞雷诺:我们来量一下它。放在那里。 哇塞。 65英寸(1.6米),不可思议! 它头可真大。
Narrator: Big, but less than half the size of supercroc's skull.
旁白:大吗?大也不会超过 帝王鳄头骨的一半。
Man: Enormous. PS: You've got a ... 14-foot croc.
第一个人:真大。保罗·塞雷诺:有14英尺长(4.3米)。
Man: I knew it was big.
第一个人:我就知道它很大。
PS: Don't get off. You don't get off, but don't worry about me.
保罗·塞雷诺:按住!千万要按住它!不用为我担心。
Narrator: Paul has his data, so they decide to release the animal back into the river.
旁白:保罗得到了他要的数据,所以他们决定 重新把它放回到河里。
PS: Don't get off! Don't get off! Don't get off!
保罗:使劲!使劲按住!呆在上面别动!
Narrator: Paul has never seen a fossil do that.
旁白:保罗从来没有见过一具“化石”会这样做。
PS: Okay, when I say three, we move. One, two, three! Whoa!
保罗:我数到三,咱们一起放开。 一,二,三! 哇!
So -- there were -- (Applause) Well, you know, the -- the fossil record is truly amazing because it really forces you to look at living animals in a new way. We proved with those measurements that crocodiles scaled isometrically. It depended on the shape of their skull, though, so we had to actually get those measurements to be sure that we had reconstructed and could prove to the scientific world that supercroc in fact is a 40-foot crocodile, probably a male. Anyway, you find other things, too. I'm going to lead an expedition to the Sahara to dig up Africa's largest neolithic site. We found this last year. Two hundred skeletons, tools, jewelry.
所以...... (掌声) 你知道,化石记录非常地有意义, 因为它逼迫你用新的方式去了解现在的动物。 我们用那些数据已经证明了 所有的鳄鱼身体比例都是一样的。 然而,身体的比例是由头骨决定的, 所以我们要用那些数据来 衡量我们重新复原的骨架,然后才向科学界公布 这条巨型鳄鱼具体情况,长40英尺(12米),很可能是条公鳄。 无论如何,你还会找到其它的东西。 我将要带领一队伍去沙哈拉沙漠 挖掘非洲最大的新石器遗址。 去年我们发现了这个, 骨架,工具,珠宝,共有200件。
This is a ceremonial disk. An amazing record of the colonization of the Sahara 5,000 years ago is been sitting out there waiting for us to go back. So, really exciting. And then work later is going to take us to Tibet. Now, we normally think of Tibet as a highland. It's really an island continent. It was a precursor to India, a messenger from Gondwana -- a lost paradise of dinosaurs isolated for millions of years. No one's found them. We know where they are, and we're going to go and get them next year. They're only between 13 and 14,000 feet, but if you go in the warm part of the year, it's O.K. Now, I tried to suture together a dinosaur evolutionary history so that we can try to understand some basic patterns of evolution. I've talked about a few of them. We really need to take that further. We need to delve into this mass of anatomy that we've been compiling to understand where the changes are occurring and what this means. We can't predict, necessarily, what will happen in evolution, but we can learn some of the rules of the game, and that's really what we're trying to do.
这是一个仪式盘, 是沙哈拉部落化的重要证明。 它在那里呆了5000年, 一直等着我们回去。所以,我们非常兴奋。 接下来由于工作原因,我们去了西藏。 现在,我们通常认为西藏是一片高地。 然而它是一块岛内大陆。 它是印度的先导, 是来自冈瓦纳-- --恐龙失乐园--的信使, 与世隔绝了几百万年。 过去一直没有人知道它们的下落。现在我们知道在哪里, 并且计划明年去那儿。 那里海拔有1万3千到1万4千英尺(3962~4267米), 但是如果春秋季节去那里,没什么大问题。 现在,我要把这些片段连接成一段恐龙的进化史。 以此来更好地了解恐龙的 一些基本进化模式。 我已经谈到了一些,但我们要做更深入的探讨。 我们需要研究这些 我们一直在复原的解剖结构 来理解什么时候发生了变化,这些变化又意味着什么。 我们不一定能预测进化的走向, 但是我们能了解一些进化的规则, 这就是我们正在努力做得的事。
With regard to the biogeographic question, the Earth is dividing. These are all landlubbing animals. There's a couple of choices. You get divided, and a continent's division corresponds to a fork in the evolutionary tree, or you're crafty, and you manage to escape from one to the other and erase that division, or you're living peacefully on each side, and on one side you just go extinct, and you survive on the other side and create a difference. And the fourth thing is that you actually did one or the other of those three things, but the paleontologist never found you. And you take those four instances and you realize you have a complex problem. And so, in addition to digging, I think we have some answers from the dinosaur record. I think these dinosaurs migrated -- we call it dispersal -- around the globe, with the slightest land bridge. They did it within two or three degrees of the pole, to maintain similarity between continents. But when they were divided, indeed they were divided, and we do see the continents carving differences among dinosaurs.
关于生物地理学这个问题, 地球正在分裂。 这些都是在陆地上生活的动物。这里存在很多选择。 陆生动物被分开,每一个分开后的大陆板块 对应着进化树的一个分叉, 如果你够厉害,成功地 从一个板块跳到另一个板块,也就是说你消除了这种隔离, 要么你在两边都生活很好, 要么你在一个板块上灭绝了, 要么你在另外的板块活下来,并且发生了一些变化。 第四种可能是,你的情况属于 这三者之一,但是古生物学家还没发现你。 考虑了这四种可能, 你发现这是一个复杂的问题。 因此,除了挖掘之外,我认为我们能从 恐龙的记录上得到一些答案。我觉得恐龙曾经有过迁移-- 我们称之为分散--在全球范围内,通过最狭窄的大陆连接地带。 它们通过两个或三个连接 来保持不同大陆之间物种的相似性。 但是有时候它们真正地被隔离了, 我们也确实看到不同的大陆 在恐龙身上留下了不同的痕迹。
But there's one thing that's even more important, and I think that's extinction. We have downgraded this factor. It carves up the history of life, and gives us the differences that we see in the dinosaur world towards the end, right before the bolide impact. The best way to test this is to actually create a model. So if we move back, this is a two-dimensional typical tree of life. I want to give you three dimensions. So you see the tree of life, but now I've added the dimension of area. So the tree of life is normally divergence over time. Now we have divergence over time, but we've created the third dimension of area.
但是我觉得有一件事更加重要,那就是灭绝。 我们忽略了这件事。 灭绝这个因素在生命历史留下深刻的印记, 而且造成了我们所看到的在 恐龙世界的差异性,一直持续到恐龙的消失, 持续到彗星撞击地球之前。 验证这个理论的最好方法是建立模型。 如果我们往回看,这是一个二维的生命树。 我要向你们展示三维的生命树。 这是一棵生命树, 现在我区域作为一个维度加上去。 生命树随着时间的流逝形成分叉。 在看到时间产生的分叉之后,我们又添加了第三个维度--区域。
This is a computer program which has three knobs. We can control those things that we're worried about: extinction, sampling, dispersal -- going from one area to another. And ultimately we can control the branching to mimic what we think the continents were like, and run it a thousand times, so we can estimate the parameters, to answer the question whether we are on the mark or not, at least to know the barriers of the problems. So that's a little bit about the science.
这是一个计算机程序, 它由三部分组成。 我们控制我们关心的参数: 灭绝,抽样,分散-- 从一个区域移动到另一个区域。 最终我们可以通过控制这些分支 来模拟曾经这些大陆的样子, 通过一千次的运行,我们可以估计这些参数, 这样我们就能知道我们的工作是否在正确的方向上进行, 至少能知道问题的难点。这是关于科学的一点东西。
Today I'm going to spend the rest of my few minutes up here talking about the other stuff that I do in Chicago, which is related to the fact that I never -- and actually, in talking to a lot of TEDsters, there's a number of you out there -- I don't know that I'd get an answer honestly, if I asked you to raise your hand, but there are a number of you out there that started your scientific, technical, entertainment career as failures, by society's standards, as failures by schools. I was one of those. I was failed by my school -- my school failed me. Who's pointing fingers? Several teachers nearly killed me. I found myself in art. I was a total failure in school, not really headed to graduate high school. And I went on -- that's my first painting on canvas. I read a dictionary. I got into college. I became an artist. O.K., and started drawing. It became abstract. I worked up a portfolio, and I was headed to New York. Sometimes I would see bones when there was a body there. Something was going on in the background. I headed to New York to a studio. I took a side trip to the American Museum, and I never recovered.
今天我要利用剩下的时间 谈谈我在芝加哥做的事, 这关系到一个事实-- 其实我在之前的TED演讲中谈到过, 你们中的很多人当时在哪儿--我不知道我会得到一个答案 老实说,如果我让你们举手, 会发现你们中很多人在 科学、技术和娱乐等领域的最初尝试 是一个失败,不管从社会的标准,还是从学校的标准来说。 我就是一个失败的例子。我在学校学习差劲--学校对我没了信心。 谁在指我? 一些老师几乎要把我杀了。 我发现我喜欢艺术。 在学校,我是一个彻底的失败者,高中都没毕业。 我继续朝我的方向走--那是我的第一幅画。 我读了一本字典。我进了学院。 我成为了画家,开始画画。 我变得抽象。 我做了一个文件夹,去了纽约。 有时候看见一具身体,我就会研究它的骨骼。 一些事发生后,我去了纽约的一个工作室。 我顺便去了美国博物馆,从来没有回过神来。
But really it's the same discipline -- they're kindred disciplines. I mean, is there anything that is not visualizing what can't be seen, in terms of discovering this dinosaur bone from a small piece of it that's out there, or seeing the distortion that we try to see as evolutionary distortion in one animal to another? This is a very extraordinarily visual. I give you a human face because you're experts at that. It takes us years to understand how to do that with dinosaurs. They're really kindred disciplines. But what we're trying to create in Chicago is a way to get, collect together, those students who are least represented in our science and technology spheres. We all know, and there's been several allusions to it, that we are failing in our ability to produce enough scientists, engineers and technicians.
但这真的是同样的学科--它们是同源学科。 我的意思是,所有的东西 都能在某种程度上把我们肉眼看不见的东西展示出来, 就恐龙挖掘而言,通过恐龙的一小部分的骨骼可以发现恐龙 观察那些 我们希望看到的扭曲, 这些是进化的扭曲,从一种动物到另一种动物。 这是非常奇特的视觉。 我先给你们看人脸,因为人脸是最熟悉不过了。 经过很好几年的研究,我们知道了如何把这运用到恐龙身上。 这其实是很相似的学科。 但我在芝加哥所做的 是把 这些学生聚集在一起,这些学生 从科学技术方面是失败者。 我们都知道这些失败意味着 我们的社会不能产生 足够的科学家,工程师和技术人员的的能力。
We've known that for a long time. We've gone through the Sputnik phase, and now, as you see the increase in the pace of what we're doing, it becomes even more prominent. Where are all these people going to come from? And a more general question for our society is, what's going to happen to all the rest that are left behind? What about all the kids like me that were in school -- kids like some of you out there -- that were in school and didn't get a chance and will never get a chance to participate in science and technology?
我们对此认同已就。我们经过了初期探索阶段, 现在你可以看到 社会的发展越来越快。 这个问题变得更加显著。我们社会需要的人才将从哪里来? 一个更加普遍的问题是, 对于那些落后的孩子, 那学孩子就像曾经在学校读书的我-- 像你们中的一些孩子-- 在学校从来没有机会 参加科学技术活动,他们该怎么办?
Those are the questions I ask. And we talk about Ethiopia, and it's very important. Niger is equally important, and I'm trying desperately to do something in Niger. They have an AIDS problem. I asked -- the U.S. State Department asked the government recently, What do you want to do? And they gave them two problems. Dinosaurs was one of them. Give us a museum of dinosaurs, and we will attract tourists, which is our number two industry. And I hope to God the United States government, me, or TED, or somebody helps us do that, because that would be an incredible thing for their country. But when we look back at our own country, we're looking back at our cities, the cities where most of you come from -- certainly the city I come from -- there's legions of kids out there like these. And the question is -- and we started to address this question for centuries -- as to how we get these kids involved in science.
这是我要问的问题。我要谈谈埃塞俄比亚,这非常重要。 尼日尔也同样重要,我非常想 在那里做一些事。 他们有很严重的艾滋病问题。 最近美国国务院对当地政府提出一个问题, 你们将怎么做?他们给出了两个问题。 其中一个问题和恐龙有关。 给我们一个恐龙博物馆, 这样我们就可以吸引更多游客,旅游是我们的第二大支柱产业。 我希望美国政府,我,抑或是TED 或者其他人能办到这一点,因为这对他们的国家是在太重要了。 但是当我们把视线移回到我们的国家,我们审视我们城市, 这些养育我们的城市--当然也养育了我-- 有大批的孩子在哪儿 诸如此类的孩子。 问题是--我们从几个世纪前就开始着手解决这个问题-- 如何让这些孩子参入到科学中去。
We've started in Chicago an organization -- a non-profit organization -- called Project Exploration. These are two kids from Project Exploration. We met them in their early stages in high school. They were -- failing to poor students, and they are now -- one at the University of Chicago, another in Illinois. We've got students at Harvard. We're six years old. And we created a track record. Because when you go out there as a scholar, and you try to find out longitudinal studies, track records like that, there essentially are very few, if none. So, we've created an incredible track record of 100 percent graduation, 90 percent going to college, many first-generation, 90 percent of those choosing science as a career. It's an impressive track record, and so we look back and we say, well, we didn't really exactly work this out theoretically from the start, but when we look back, there are theoretical movements in science education.
我们从芝加哥开始 创办了一个非营利性组织-- 叫做“探索工程”。 这是两个来自“探索工程”的孩子。 我们在他们刚上高中时认识他们。他们 是差等生, 现在他们一个在芝加哥大学,另一个在伊利诺伊。 我们有去哈佛的学生。我们的机构已经有6年的历史。 我们创造了成绩记录。 因为一旦你成为一个学者,你会试图去进行纵向研究, 比如成绩记录之类的,这些记录本身很少。 我们创造了惊人的成绩记录,百分之百的毕业率。 百分之九十进了大学,很多是应届, 百分之九十选择了科学研究作为职业。 这是令人影响深刻的成绩记录,所以回过来看我们说, 我们不是从理论开始的, 但我们回头看,发现有理论支持我们的科学教育。
It's gone through science as an inquiry, which was a big advance, and Dewey back at Chicago -- you learn by doing. To -- you learn by envisioning yourself as a scientist, and then you learn to envision yourself as a scientist. The next step is to learn the capability to make yourself a scientist. You have to have those steps. If you have -- It's easy to get kids interested in science. It's hard to get them to envision themselves as a scientist, which involves standing up in front of people like we're doing here at this symposium and presenting something as a knowledgeable person, and then seeing yourself in the role as a scientist and giving yourself the tools to pursue that.
探索中贯穿着科学, 这是很大的进步, 在芝加哥杜威说-- 你通过实践学习。 你通过想象你 成为科学家的样子来学习, 然后你学会如何把自己想象成一位科学家。 下一步是学习 成为科学家的必备本领。 你学要有这些步骤。如果你有-- 就能很容易地让孩子们对科学产生兴趣。 让他们把自己想象成科学家这一点很难, 这涉及到站在大家面前,就像我现在做的一样, 以有学之士的身份去展示一些东西, 然后就能看到你自己是作为一位科学家出现的 同时给你自己追求科学家这个梦想的能力。
And so, that's what we're going to do. We're planning a permanent home in Chicago. We have lots of ideas, but I guarantee you this one thing -- and I've talked to some people here at TED -- it's not going to look like anything you've seen before. It's going to be part-school, part-museum hall, part-conservatory, part-zoo, and part of an answer to the problem of how you interest kids in science. Thank you very much.
那就是我们要做的事。我们计划在芝加哥建立一个永久的家。 我们有很多想法,但我向你们保证一件事-- 这点我也在TED跟一些人谈到过-- 我要说的是你们从来没有见过的。 我们要建立的是一个既像学校,又像博物馆的场所, 它还像温室和动物园, 它将部分上解决 如何让孩子们对科学产生兴趣的问题。 谢谢大家。