巨型跳蚤加速恐龍滅絕？防蚊液你在哪裡??
New from NPR
巨大無比的恐龍的天敵是啥？科學家現在發現，蚤禍可能也是加速牠們滅絕的主因之一，在那個沒有防蚊液或是DEET的時代，被咬也只能認栽。
這篇NPR的報導，揭露了科學家的新發現，那就是一種折磨恐龍的巨型跳蚤(這種跳蚤雖然只有兩公分那麼長，但是跟一般的微型跳蚤相比，Size已經夠嚇人)
唉，搞了半天，恐龍也有冤親債主啊，大家要記得下載聲音檔，用力給他多聽個幾遍!
The
Dinosaurs' Nemeses: Giant, Jurassic Fleas
恐龍的復仇者，巨型侏儸紀似蚤
Fossil-hunting
scientists尋找化石的科學家 are coming to grips with正在認真研究a new discovery that
could change forever how we think of dinosaurs. What they've found is that
dinosaurs may well have been tortured折磨 by large, flea-like bloodsucking類似跳蚤會吸血的insects. NPR's Christopher Joyce has more on this entomological revelation昆蟲的新發現.
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Yes, it appears to be
true. The greatest predators掠食者 that ever roamed漫遊 Earth suffered just as we mammals哺乳類動物 did - and still do. Fleas跳蚤 were thought to have evolved演化 along with mammals
like us. They like our soft skins and a diet of warm blood. But now scientists in China have discovered Pseudopulex jurassicus似蚤 and its equally tyrannical蠻橫的 cousin, Pseudopulex magnus巨大似蚤 - magnus as in great. And indeed, they were big - several times
as big as current fleas - and equipped to feed.
相關文獻中文請參考
http://www.cnu.edu.cn/pages/info_details_xwbd.jsp?boardid=70201&classcode=70201&seq=15923
http://www.cnu.edu.cn/pages/info_details_xwbd.jsp?boardid=70201&classcode=70201&seq=15923
GEORGE POINAR JR.: So they have this large beak喙狀嘴 that's, oh, it looks
horrible. It looks like a syringe注射器, you know, when you go to the doctor to get a shot打針 or something.
JOYCE: Zoologist George Poinar Jr. is an emeritus榮譽 professor at Oregon
State University. He studies life forms生物 preserved for millions of
years in amber包藏在琥珀裡數億年, ancient tree sap樹汁. He calls these
insects pseudo-fleas偽(似)蚤. They were found in amber in China. Besides being bigger than modern
fleas, their legs are unusually long. Poinar says the
legs don't look like they're built for jumping, that perhaps
for grabbing onto緊抓著 the bump-like scales突起的鱗片或介殼 on dinosaur skin so they could jab刺戳 that proboscis能吸吮的管狀器官 into the skin between them.
JR.: Let's face it, they're the only small creatures
that would dare attack a dinosaur. Anything else that was larger, it would
definitely have been eliminated滅除.
JOYCE: It's been a veritable真正可稱得上是 flea circus跳蚤馬戲團 lately in the fossil-hunting business. Just last month, Chinese scientists
announced the discovery of another set of flea-like insects preserved in
amber. They were much like the new ones Poinar examined, which are described in
the journal Current Biology（當代生物學刊）. Poinar says the world 150 million years ago
apparently was getting increasingly buggy充滿蟲子的, and those insects were changing the dinosaurs' world. They did that
in at least two ways. Because they were pollinators傳粉的昆蟲, insects probably encouraged the
evolution of flowering plants成就了花卉植物的演化 rather than fernlike plants蕨類植物. Plant-eating
dinosaurs that couldn't adapt to a new diet適應新的飲食習慣 would have been in trouble. And scientists who study dinosaur feces排泄物 - yes, they do that -
say dinosaurs had diseases, parasites寄生蟲, worms. Poinar says they probably got some of them from
insects like these pseudo-fleas.
JR.: To a lot of them, this was something brand new that they hadn't been exposed to暴露於 before, and it would
have decimated大量滅殺 the populations. And it wasn't just one disease but a
combination of diseases.
JOYCE: He says those diseases could have hastened加速了 the demise死亡 of dinosaurs. It does
make you wonder if dinosaurs had had DEET待以妥，又稱敵避胺或是避蚊胺, where would we be now?
Christopher Joyce, NPR News.
Christopher Joyce, NPR News.
DEET:
為 N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide之縮寫, 由美國軍隊研發出的一種防蚊液。目的為因應二次世界大戰時的叢林作戰jungle warfare使用
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