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.
6500萬年前,一場非常重要的 災難性的實踐 改變了陸上生命的歷程 下面我要講的陸上動物 雖然只是地球陸上生物的敗類—— 陸地也只是那麼一點四處浮動的地盤——但對我們來說,它們卻有著深遠意義 因為它們極大地擴展了我們對於史前的經驗範圍 然而這些動物雖然消失了 另一種生命形式,哺乳類動物 逐漸繁榮起來,並取代了他們的地位。 我們對這個變化 非常了解。 因此,這是問題就像是百慕大三角的中心一樣 是謎團的核心。我們知道像海嘯、地震 和我們整個人類歷史上 所經歷的其他災難 都比不上這場災難 對於地球的影響
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,即使是在彗星碰撞理論之前 甚至在科學界大體開始同意 進化論之前 科學家和各種自然歷史學家們 已經把地球的歷史 分成兩個階段: 中生代,,史前的中期,和新生代,史前的晚期 結果後來事實證明了這樣的劃分 和我們的地質歷史相當吻合 中山代是各大地質板塊 分裂的時期 而新生代則是各板塊重新拼合的時期 像南美大陸和北美大陸、印度和亞洲的合併 所以,我的工作,實際上,就是試著去理解並比較 中生代生物繁榮的特性 和新生代時期生物繁榮的特性 來看這些恐龍和其他動物能幫助我們解釋哪些謎團 還有來看大陸漂移 可以給我們帶來哪些對於生物進化的啟示
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.
但我們馬上就會碰上這個問題 "為什麼恐龍去水里生活呢?" 比如,有些哺乳類動物就轉而去水里生活,比如這個傢伙 你可以到外面看看,有很多這樣的例子 被火流星影響了五百到一千萬年 我們有各種各樣的動物改為水中生活了,那為什麼恐龍不這麼做呢? 為什麼恐龍不變成小點的體積,爬到樹上 或是挖洞到地底下生活呢 為什麼他們都不做這些事情呢?而且,如果他們不生活在這些地方 有哪些動物生活在那裡呢? 如果沒有任何動物生活在水里地下,那麼 這對於陸上生物進化說明了什麼呢? 這些是非常有趣的問題。我認為很多問題跟身體體積有關 事實上,大多數問題跟體積有關係 這裡的體積是指恐龍 在某個自然災害之後得到的一片空蕩的生態環境中 所具有的體型
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.
在研究恐龍進化史 並親自參與現場挖掘多年後 我轉而研究哺乳動物繁榮 結果我發現,似乎所有的事物都以極快的速度跟規模向前發展 就像發展快速的科技一樣 恐龍進化卻是以一個莊嚴緩慢的速度進行的 緩慢到你不想去測量 你是想要測量恐龍進化的多樣性嗎? 還是想要測量 恐龍進化到最大體型所需的時間? 是的,他們具有較大的身形 但很多體型都偏小 然而我們感興趣的是這些恐龍花了多長時間才長的這麼大 五千萬年。 哺乳動物只花了十分之一的時間 就進化到最大的體型 並且侵占了所有的棲息地
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.
所以我們要記取教訓 這些教訓都來自一個特例 這個特例我們現在都很熟悉,因為我們跟許多其他學者 在世界各地的發現 這張幻燈片先前也展示過,是著名的侏儸紀始祖鳥 我們現在知道了從恐龍到始祖鳥的轉變 是唯一的一次恐龍進化過程中體型 變小的轉變 我們馬上就會來看這個轉變是從哪裡開始的 而且,這個時期始祖鳥迅速地 侵占了所有之前我告訴你們 恐龍沒有佔領的棲息地 始祖鳥轉為海生。我們今天 從冰蓋裡發現了他們。 這些是穴居鳥 不管何種體型,他們都生活在樹上 當然,也生活在陸上
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.
在後來的《科學》和《自然》雜誌中 常常被刊登上的鳥就是我們首先命名的 我們叫他三塔中國鳥,比始祖鳥還要高等一些 而如果你研究不同的層,你就會發現 比始祖低級的生物,以及發展層次上的每級階梯 所以今天如果你發現了新的化石,我們通常會劈開他們的毛髮—— 或者說更恰當的說,羽毛——來決定其是否為 鳥類 這事實上是陸地上,從一個棲息地到另一個棲息地, 所發生的最重要的轉變 無一例外 來幫助我們理解這個大骨架 羽毛厚重,幾公斤重的動物是 怎樣進行這個轉變的 這是我們進化序列中,最重要的事件 ——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.
現在,我的工作是從頭開始研究這個轉變。 我想如果我要去瞭解恐龍是怎樣進化的, 我就得回到那些遠古地層, 因為古生物學家在那裡發現了恐龍的碎片,回到 最早期恐龍生活的時空裡 我想在這裡給大家放一小段影片, 讓大家對我們所面對的東西有一點瞭解。通常,大家會問很多問題, 例如,「你們是怎樣在這樣的地區找到化石的?」 我們放一下第一段影片。 這是個不錯的直升機之旅 通過阿根廷的東北地區 的一些早期地層 我們正在飛過一個懸崖,在這個懸崖頂 恐龍已經完全佔據 而在懸崖底部,恐龍的化石稀少的像母雞的牙齒一樣,幾乎不存在 而懸崖底部卻正是發現恐龍進化源頭的地方
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.
去這樣的地區,你需要一張地質圖 還有一張地形圖 最好還可以帶來一隊極具靈感的團隊 剩下的就靠你自己了。你得找到化石。 你得挖一個比這大不少的洞 才能把化石挖出來;你得爬上這些懸崖 找到所有存在過的東西的證據—— 不僅僅是恐龍,而是整個史前故事。如果你夠幸運 並且挖到了這樣的一個地方 找到了凝灰岩來挖掘,我們就找到了 我們發現了一具有2億2800萬年的 最原始的恐龍骨架: 這就是爾龍 3英呎半高(1米左右), 有著一個美麗頭骨的捕食者, 也就是食肉恐龍,兩足行走 然而,你或你的孩子記憶當中的其它恐龍 至少是有四條腿的。 來看一下這個頭骨, 5到6英吋長,非常漂亮。 它看起來像鳥的頭骨,事實上的確這樣。 很像鳥的頭骨,並且是空心的。 它是掠食者,大概有25磅, 也就是10公斤。 這就是恐龍的起源,然後逐漸繁榮,分散到各個地方去。 這比哺乳動物的繁榮, 一個四足動物的繁榮,要大十倍 我們和恐龍是非常相像的, 並且我們在我們作為兩足動物的方式也很特別
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.
如果你想知道遠古大陸分裂後 發生了什麼, 還有當恐龍 ——雖然他們是旱鴨子—— 漂流到世界各地。有一些關鍵證據是缺失的 而大都數這些證據在南半球的大陸上, 因為那些地區鮮有被發掘探索。 如果你想為這個領域增添些什麼,為了使它更完美一點, 你就必須走遍 地球的各個角落-- 非洲、印度、南極洲、澳大利亞-- 並且試著拼湊起各種證據來找尋一個最終答案。 我曾經到過其中的一些大陸,但是非洲 用史蒂芬•品克的話來說,很大程度上是一塊空白板 但這塊白板中間是一塊巨大的黑板, 那裡有很多埋藏恐龍化石的小片地區 條件是你能在撐過這些探險
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.
沒有路通往沙哈拉沙漠,那是個無邊無際的地方。 如果要把 80噸重的沙哈拉沙漠恐龍化石 搬出去,你就必須有一支能 克服任何困難的探險隊伍。 這些困難當中,其中一些是政治原因,很多是身體上的, 再有一些,也是最重要的,是精神上的。 你要能承受各種各樣的惡劣條件-- 你必須驅車進入沙漠腹地, 那裡你可以看到形態各異的沙漠景觀-- 你可以見到我們所發現的各種化石-- 一些沒有任何人發現過的化石 有人會問你們的隊伍是由哪些人組成的? 他們是由 一群 懂得科學精神的人組成,而這個精神就是有目的性的探險。 隊伍成員通常是一群沒有去過沙漠的學生。 其中一些學生相對經驗豐富些。
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.
作為領隊--這可以說是一個團隊運動- 你必須試圖激勵他們 在這樣的他們無法想像的嚴酷條件下 做比他們過去做過的事情艱鉅得多的工作 所以,125華氏度(52攝氏度)很正常。 而地表通常可以達到150華氏(66攝氏度)。 因此,你最好不要把金屬工具放在太陽底下, 否則如果不小心去抓它們,就會被燙到一級燒傷 你也會發現自己正處於一個令人驚奇的文化環境之中, 你真的是在跟世界上 僅存的真正的遊牧民族打交道。 他們是圖阿雷格遊牧民族,他們這樣的生活方式 已經保持了很多世紀了 你的工作就是把這些挖掘出來, 然後想辦法讓他們載入史冊 要做到這一點,你需要把這些從沙漠運到 幾千英里之外的另一個地方。
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.
我們現在說的是埃塞俄比亞,但接下來要談的是- 尼日爾--尼日爾北部地區-- 在那裡我們拍到了這張照片。 當我們開始工作時, 尼日爾基本上沒有集裝箱運輸車。 你得自己把這些化石運到 非洲海岸, 然後再搬上船,如果你想把這些東西運出撒哈拉 這是2000英里的路程。 在大量的挖掘和其他工作之後, 我們利用從那裡得到的恐龍化石, 幾乎就是一群恐龍中的一部分——大約有20噸—— 組成了Jobaria龍 這是一種我們在其他大陸上沒有見到過的蜥腳類龍 它看起來暫時有點與周圍環境不搭。 它和我們如今在北美岩層中 所找到的化石一點也不同 這是一頭給別的恐龍帶來麻煩的動物
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.
還有,不斷擴展—— 整個動物園都會有麻煩。當你發現這樣的東西時—— 你們其中一些人可能有機會摸到了這個—— 這是記載了歷史的東西。你摸到的東西距今已有1億1000萬年了。 這是拇指爪,在這個恐龍化石發現後不久就發現了它。 這樣看生命是多麼令人驚奇, 並且當我們開始思考時間深度時 驚奇才會源源不斷而來 這樣看生命,只是不超過百年之前的事情 在那時,時間,這個第四維度 在不到一個世紀之前,放射性測年技術的被發明 使我們能測得這些化石的年齡, 這是可能是一項最為深遠的變革, 因為它劇烈的改變了我們看待 自己和世界的方式 當你瞭解這些化石背後的歷史後, 我想這會改變 對科學有可能產生興趣學生的態度。
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.
這是似鱷龍的拇指爪。 這還有其他一些。 這是我們在摩納哥發現的龐然大物。 我們用CAT掃描了它的腦,并製作了頭骨原型 它前腦的體積 只相當於人類的十五分之一。 這是《科學》雜誌的封面, 因為有人認為人類比這些動物更聰明, 但我們從一些例子中可以看出 儘管 人類在腦容量上占上風, 但是我們和它們的一些態度相似。 總之,我們人類是小型掠食者。 《侏羅紀公園》這部電影中你所知道的一切 所有的那些小型動物 它們都生活在北方大陸 這是第一具來自南方大陸的骨架, 你猜怎麼著?我們開始構建它。 它的後脚沒有大爪子,看起來不像迅猛龍。 很明顯,它是一個新的恐龍繁榮中的分支 所以我們正盡力還原當初的情景, 包括會飛的恐龍, 例如這隻我們在非洲重新復原的翼龍。
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.
當然還有鱷魚。 我們還沒有給這條可怕的鱷魚取名字, 讓人驚歎的是 這條巨鱷的下顎骨 就躺在沙漠之中。 學術上稱之為帝王鱷。 從額骨來看,這是一條成年的奧里諾科鱷魚。 我們竭盡全力想把它復原, 所以只有和現在的鱷魚作比較之後, 才能知道鱷魚身體的比例是怎樣的。 接下來放第二個短片。 一般來說,這是一種科學,但更確切地說是探險。 我們得找出當今體型最大的鱷魚, 并測量它的一些數據。
Narrator: ... as long as their boat.
旁白:只要他們的船……
Man: Look at that set of choppers! Yeah, he's a big one.
第一個人:快看那排牙齒!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:如果他們能把它拖上岸, 這條鱷魚就能提供一些有用的數據 用來幫助保羅更好的復原帝王鱷。
Man: OK, hand me some more here. Man 2: OK.
第一個人:我需要更多的人手。第二個人:我來了。
Narrator: It falls to Paul to cover its eyes.
旁白:由保羅來蓋住它的眼睛。
Man: Watch out! Watch out! No, no, no, no. You're going to have to get on the back legs.
第一個人:小心!小心!不對!不對!你去把它的後腿按住。
Man: I got the back legs.
第一個人: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.
第二個人:你真的按住了嗎?不,你壓的是前腿,我的老兄。 現在好了,肯定沒錯。 快點來人,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.
保羅.賽雷諾:我們來量下它。放在那裡。 哇。 65英寸(1.6米),不可思議! 它的頭可真大。
Narrator: Big, but less than half the size of supercroc's skull.
旁白:大嗎? 大也不會超過帝王鱷頭骨的一半。
Man: Enormous. PS: You've got a ... 14-foot croc.
第一個人:真大。保羅.塞雷諾:有14英尺長(4.3米)。
Man: I knew it was big.
第一個人:我就知道它很大。
PS: Don't get off. You don't get off, but don't worry about me.
保羅.賽雷諾:按住!千萬要按住它!不用為我擔心。
Narrator: Paul has his data, so they decide to release the animal back into the river.
旁白:保羅得到了他要的數據,所以他們決定 重新把它放到河裡。
PS: Don't get off! Don't get off! Don't get off!
保羅:使勁!使勁按住!呆在上面別動!
Narrator: Paul has never seen a fossil do that.
旁白:保羅從來沒有見過一具“化石”會這樣。
PS: Okay, when I say three, we move. One, two, three! Whoa!
保羅:我數到三,咱們一起放開。 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…… (掌聲) 你知道,化石記錄非常有意義, 因為它促使你用一種新的眼光瞭解現存的動物。 我們用那些數據已經證明了 所有的鱷魚身體比例都是一樣的 然而,身體的比例是由頭骨決定的, 所以我們要用那些數據 來衡量我們復原的骨架,然後才向科學界公佈 這條巨型鱷魚的具體情況,長40英尺(12米),很可能是條公鱷。 無論如何,你還會找到其它的東西。 我將要帶領一支隊伍去沙哈拉沙漠 挖掘非洲最大的新石器遺址。 去年我們發現了這個, 200具骨架,工具,珠寶。
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.
這是一個儀式盤, 是撒哈拉地區被殖民化的極好的記錄 它在那裡呆了5000年, 一直等著我們回去。所以,我們非常興奮。 接著由於工作原因,我們去了西藏。 現在,我們通常認為西藏是一片高地。 然而它實際上是一塊島內大陸。 它是印度的先導, 是來自岡瓦納 恐龍失樂園——的信使, 與世隔絕了幾百萬年。 過去一直沒人知道它們的下落。現在我們知道在哪裡, 並且計劃明年去那兒。 那裡的海拔有1萬3千到1萬4千英尺(3962~4267米), 但是如果春秋季節去那裡,沒什麼大問題。 現在,我要把這些片段鏈接成一段恐龍的進化史。 以此來更好地瞭解恐龍的 一些基本進化模式。 我們已經談到了一些,但我們要做更深入的探討。 我們需要研究這些 我們一直在復原的解剖結構 來理解什麼時候發生了變化,這些變化又意味著什麽。 我們不一定能預測進化的走向, 但我們能瞭解一些進化的規則, 這就是我們正在努力做的事情
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.
關於生物地理學這個問題, 地球還在分裂。 這些都是在陸地上生活的動物。這裡存在很多選擇。 陸生動物被分開,每一個分開后的大陸板塊 對應著進化樹的一個分叉, 如果你夠厲害,成功地 從一個板塊跳到另一個板塊,也就是說你消除了這種隔離, 要麼你在兩邊都生活的很好, 要麼你在一個板塊上滅絕了, 要麼你在另外的板塊活下來,並且發生了一些變化。 第四種可能是,你的情況屬於 這三者之一,但是古生物學家還沒發現你。 考慮了這四種可能, 你發現這是一個複雜的問題。 因此,除了挖掘之外,我認為我們能從 恐龍的記錄上得到一些答案。我覺得恐龍曾經有過遷徙 我們稱之為在全球範圍內的分散,通過最狹窄的大陸鏈接地帶。 它們通過兩個或三個鏈接 來保持不同大陸之間物種的相似性。 但是有時候它們真正地被隔離了, 我們也確實看到不同的大陸 在恐龍身上留下了不同的印記。
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.
但是我覺得有一件事更加重要,那就是滅絕。 我們忽略了這件事。 滅絕這個因數在生命歷史留下深刻的印記, 而且造成了我們所看到的 在恐龍世界的差異性,一直持續到恐龍的消失, 持續到彗星撞擊地球之前。 驗證這個理論的最好方法是建立模型。 如果我們往會看,這是一顆二維生命樹。 我要向你們展示一顆三維的生命樹。 這是一顆生命樹, 現在我將區域作為另一個維度加上去。 生命樹隨著時間的流逝形成分叉。 在看到時間產生的分叉之後,我們有添加了第三個維度--區域。
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.
這是一個計算機程序, 它由三部份組成。 我們控制我們所關心的參數: 滅絕,抽樣,分散-- 從一個區域移動到另一個區域。 最終我們可以通過控制這些分支 來模擬這些大陸曾今的樣子, 通過一千次的運行,我們可以估計這些參數, 這樣我們就能知道我們的工作是否在正確的方向上進行, 至少能知道問題的難點。這是關於科學的一點東西。
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時間 談談我在芝加哥做的事, 這關係到一個事實—— 並且通過跟很多TED參會者交談 很多人就在座——我不知道我會得到答案的一個事實 老實說,如果我讓你們舉手, 會發現你們中很多人在 科學、技術和娛樂等領域的最初嘗試 是一個失敗者,從社會的標準來看,還是從學校的標準來說。 我就是一個失敗的例子。我是一個學校裡的失敗者——我的學校讓我失敗 我們要指責誰呢? 一些老師幾乎要把我弄死了。 我發現我喜歡藝術。 在學校,我是一個徹底的失敗者,沒打算要高中畢業 我繼續朝我的方向走--那是我的第一幅畫。 我讀了一本字典。我進了大學。 我成為了畫家,開始畫畫。 一切變得抽象。 我攢了一套作品,去了紐約。 有時看見一具身體,我就會研究它的骨骼。 一些事情發生后,我去了紐約的一個工作室。 我順便去了美國博物館,從來沒有回過神來。
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.
但這真的是同樣的學科--它們是同源學科。 我的意思是,所有的東西 都能在某種程度上把我們肉眼看不見的東西展示出來, 就恐龍挖掘而言,通過恐龍的一小部份的骨骼可以發現恐龍 觀察那些 我們希望看到的扭曲, 這些事進化的扭曲,從一種動物到另一種動物。 這是非常奇特的視覺。 我先給你們看人臉,因為人臉是最熟悉不過了。 經過好幾年的研究,我們知道了如何把這運用到恐龍身上。 這其實是很相似的學科。 但我在芝加哥所做的 是把 這些學生聚集在一起,一些 在我們的科技領域裡很少的學生 我們都知道,也有談到 我們的社會正在喪失生產出 足夠的科學家,工程師和技術人員的能力。
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?
我們知道這個事實已經很久了。我們經過了初期探索階段, 現在你可以看到 社會的發展越來越快。 這個問題變得更加顯著。我們的社會需要的人才將從哪裡來? 一個更加普遍的問題是, 對於那些落後的孩子, 那些孩子就想岑經在學校讀書的我-- 像在座一些人一樣-- 在學校從來沒有機會 參加科學技術活動,他們該怎麼辦?
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.
這是我要問的問題。我要談談埃塞爾比亞,這非常重要。 尼日爾也同樣重要,我非常想 在哪裡做一些事。 他們有很嚴重的艾滋病問題。 最近美國國務院對當地政府提出一個問題, 你們將怎麼做?他們給出了兩個問題。 其中一個問題和恐龍有關。 給我們一個恐龍博物館, 這樣我們就可以吸引更多遊客,旅遊是我們的第二大支柱產業。 我希望美國政府,我,或者是TED 或者其他人能辦到這一點,因為這對他們的國家實在是太重要了。 但是當我們把視線移回到我們的國家,我們審視我們的城市, 這些你們來自的城市--我來自的城市 有大批的孩子在那兒 諸如此類的孩子。 問題是--我們從幾個世紀前就開始著手解決這個問題-- 如何讓這些孩子融入到科學中去。
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.
我們從芝加哥開始 創辦了一個非盈利性組織-- 叫做“探索工程”。 這是兩個來自“探索工程”的孩子。 我們在他們剛上高中的時候認識他們。 他們是差等生, 現在他們分別就讀于芝加哥大學和伊利諾伊大學。 我們還有去哈佛的學生。我們的機構已經有6年的歷史。 我們創造了一個很好的記錄。 因為一旦你成為了一個學者,你會試圖去進行縱向研究, 記錄發展之類的,這些記錄本身就很少。 我們創造了驚人的成績,百分之百的畢業率。 百分之九十進入了大學,很多是第一代移民, 其中的百分之九十選擇了科學研究作為職業目標 這是令人印象深刻的成績,所以回過頭來看我們所說的, 我們不是從理論開始的, 但我們回頭看,發現有理論支持我們的科學教育。
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.
這個理論就是用探索來學習科學 這是很大的進步, 教育家杜威回到芝加哥后,說-- 你通過實踐來學習。 你通過想像你 成為科學家的樣子來學習, 然後你學會如何把自己想像成一位科學家。 下一步是 學習成為科學家的必備本領。 你學習要有這些步驟。如果你有-- 讓孩子們對科學產生興趣是很容易的 難的是讓他們把自己想像成科學家 這涉及到站在大家面前,就想我現在這樣, 以懂行的人的身份去展示一些東西, 想像自己成為一個科學家 給予自己追求科學家這個夢想的能力
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.
那就是我們要做的事。我們計劃在芝加哥建立一個永久的家。 我們有很多想法,但是我向你們保證一件事-- 這點我也在TED跟一些人談到過-- 我要說的是你們從來沒有見過的。 我們要建立的是一個既像學校,又像博物館的場所, 它還像溫室和動物園, 它將部份上解決 如何讓孩子們對科學產生興趣的問題。 謝謝大家。