2015考研英语阅读英文原刊《经济学人》：寒武纪大爆发

　　These dates overlap with those of signs of oxidation found in rocks in other parts of the world,confirming that whatever was going on affected the entire planet.

　　这些数据和全球其他地方发现的化石中的氧化物一起确定了到底是什么将影响整个星球。

　　Dr Zhu suspects this global environmental shift propelled the evolution of complexanimals.

　　朱博士认为是全球环境的变化促进了复杂动物的进化。

　　Dr Zhu also plans to push back before the Ediacaran period.

　　朱博士还计划回推到埃迪卡拉纪之前。

　　Other researchers have found fossils of algae and wormlike creatures in rocks in northernChina that pre-date the end of the Marinoan glaciation, 635m years ago, which marks theboundary between the Ediacaran and the Cryogenian period that precedes it.

　　其他研究者已经在中国北部的石块中发现了藻类和类似虫子的生物的化石，其年代在6.35亿年之前的圣马力诺冰期末端之前，圣马力诺冰期确定了其之前埃迪卡拉纪和成冰纪之间的边界。

　　Such fossils are hard to study, so Dr Zhu will use new imaging technologies that can look atthem without having to clean away the surrounding rock, and are also able to detect traces offossil organic matter invisible to the eye.

　　这些化石很难去研究，所以朱博士利用可以清晰成像而不用去清除周边石块的新成像技术，并且可以探测不被肉眼可见的化石有机物的踪迹。

　　Besides digging back before the Ediacaran, the new project’s researchers also intend toanalyse the unfolding of the Cambrian explosion itself by taking advantage of otherLagersttten—for China has several that date from the Cambrian.

　　除了研究埃迪卡拉纪之前以外，新项目的研究者还利用其他生物群去分析未解开的寒武纪大爆炸，因为中国有好几个这样寒武纪的群落。

　　Dr Chen, indeed, first made his name in 1984, when he excavated one at Chengjiang inYunnan province.

　　陈博士因为1984年发掘了云南澄江生物群而出名，

　　It dates from 525m years ago, which make it 20m years older than the most famousCambrianLagersttte in the West, the Burgess shale of British Columbia, in Canada.

　　澄江生物群大概在5.25亿年以前，这就使得他比西方著名的加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚的波基斯页岩寒武纪群落早了2000万年。

　　The project’s researchers plan to see how, evolutionarily speaking, the various Lagerst?ttenrelate to one another, to try to determine exactly when different groups of organismsemerged.

　　这个项目的研究者计划从进化学上解释，不同的群落是怎么和其他的群落发生联系，并且试图解决到底什么时候出现了不同的生物分类。

　　They will also look at the chemistry of elements other than carbon and oxygen—particularlynitrogen and phosphorous, which are essential to life, and sulphur, which often indicates theabsence of oxygen and is thus antithetical to much animal life.

　　他们不单单只是观察氧和碳元素，尤其是生命必须的氮和磷，以及经常指示缺少氧且和大部分动物生命对立的硫。

　　Dr Zhu hopes to map changes in the distribution of these chemicals across time and space.

　　朱博士希望绘制这些元素随着时间和空间分布变化图，确认这些变化的关联性，

　　He will assess how these changes correlate, whether they are related to weathering,mountain building and the ebb and flow of glaciers, how they could have affected theevolution of life, and how plants and animals might themselves have altered the chemistryof air and sea.

　　它们是否和天气，造山，冰川的起伏有关，他们怎样影响生命的进化，以及动植物他们自己是如何改变空气和海洋中的化学组成。

　　Most ambitiously, Dr Zhu, Dr Xiao and their colleagues hope to drill right through severalfossiliferous sites in southern China where Ediacaran rocks turn seamlessly into Cambrianones.

　　朱博士，肖博士以及他们的团队很有雄心的希望在中国南部那些无缝连接埃迪卡拉纪和寒武纪的几个含有化石的地方穿凿而过。

　　Such places are valuable because in most parts of the world there is a gap, known as anunconformity, between the Ediacaran and the Cambrian.

　　这些地方都很有价值，世界的大部分地区，埃迪卡拉和寒武纪之间都有空白，这种空白被称为不整合面。

　　Unconformities are places where rocks have been eroded before new ones are deposited,and the widespread Ediacaran-Cambrian unconformity has been a big obstacle tounderstanding the Cambrian explosion.

　　不整合面地方的石块在新的沉积之前已经被侵蚀，埃迪卡拉纪-寒武纪之间广泛的不整合面是了解寒武纪大爆发的一个重大障碍。

　　With luck, then, a mystery first noticed in the Welsh mountains in the early 19th century willbe solved in the Chinese ones in the early 21st.

　　幸运的是，在19世纪早期威尔士群山中发现的神奇事件将被21世纪中国发现的群落所解决。

　　If it is, the origin of the animal kingdom will have become clear, and an important gap in thehistory of humanity itself will have been filled.

　　如果是的话，那动物王国的起源将会变得更清晰，人类历史中一个重要的空白将被填补。

　　2015考研英语复习正是强化复习阶段，考研英语阅读在考研英语中占了40分，所以考研英语阅读是英语科目中重要的一项。新东方名师范猛老师曾建议过考研生需要坚持每天泛读10-15分钟的英文原刊。强烈推荐了杂志《经济学人》.杂志中的文章也是考研英语的主要材料来源.希望考研考生认真阅读，快速提高考研英语阅读水平。

　　The Cambrian explosion

　　寒武纪大爆发

　　Kingdom come

　　动物王国出现

　　Chinese palaeontologists hope to explain the riseof the animals

　　中国古生物学家希望解释动物的起源

　　AMONG the mysteries of evolution, one of the most profound is what exactly happened atthe beginning of the Cambrian period.

　　在众多进化之谜中，其中意义最深远的就是在寒武纪开始时期到底发生了什么。

　　Before that period, which started 541m years ago and ran on for 56m years, life was amodest thing.

　　在寒武纪之前，从5.41亿年前开始持续5600万年的时代里，生命是适度存在的。

　　Bacteria had been around for about 3 billion years, but for most of this time they had had theEarth to themselves.

　　细菌已经存在了大约30亿年，但是在多数时间里，它们主宰着地球。

　　Seaweeds, jellyfish-like creatures,sponges and the odd worm do start to put in an appearance a few million years before theCambrian begins.

　　海藻、类似水母的生物、海绵生物和奇怪的虫子确实在寒武纪开始的前几百万年已经出现。

　　But red in tooth and claw the Precambrian was not—for neither teeth nor claws existed.

　　但是前寒武纪时期却不是腥牙血爪，因为那个时候牙齿和爪子都没有出现。

　　Then, in the 20m-year blink of a geological eye, animals arrived in force.

　　然后，在地质学看来一眨眼的2000万年中，动物大规模的出现了。

　　Most of the main groups of the animal kingdom—arthropods, brachiopods, coelenterates,echinoderms, molluscs and even chordates, the branch from which vertebrates went on todevelop—are found in the fossil beds of the Cambrian.

　　人们在寒武纪群落里发现了动物王国的主要动物集群，包括腕足、腔肠、棘皮、软体和脊索。

　　The sudden evolution of this megafauna is known as the Cambrian explosion.

　　寒武纪因威尔士的群山而得名，

　　But two centuries after it was noticed, in the mountains of Wales after which the Cambrianperiod is named, nobody knows what detonated it.

　　在寒武纪被注意到的两个多世纪里，没人知道到底为什么会发生大爆炸。

　　A group of Chinese scientists, led by Zhu Maoyan of the Nanjing Institute of Geology andPalaeontology, plan to change that with a project called “From the Snowball Earth to theCambrian explosion: the evolution of life and environment 600m years ago”.

　　由南京地质古生物研究所的朱茂炎领导的中国科学家小组计划通过一个名为“从雪球事件到寒武纪大爆发：距今6亿年前后的生物与环境演变”的项目改变这种情况。

　　The “Snowball Earth” refers to a series of ice ages that happened between 725m and 541myears ago.

　　雪球事件指的是7.25亿-5.41年前一系列的冰川时代。

　　These were, at their maxima, among the most extensive glaciations in the Earth’s history.

　　在顶峰时期，它们是地球史上最大规模的冰川时期。

　　They alternated, though, with periods that make the modern tropics seem chilly: the planet’saverage temperature was sometimes as high as 50C.

　　不过他们是交替发生的，在某些时候，使得现在的热带地区变的寒冷，有时候全球的平均温度却高达50度。

　　Add the fact that a supercontinent was breaking up at this time, and you have a picture of aworld in chaos.

　　从而导致了一个超大陆分裂，从此我们就有了一个混乱的地球，

　　Just the sort of thing that might drive evolution.

　　就是这些事情可能导致进化的发生。

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