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At first sight, manatees might look like seals or dolphins. But in fact, some of their closest relatives live on land. These toenails are the giveaway, remarkably similar to those of elephants.
乍一看，海牛可能看起来像是海报或是海豚。可事实上，他们的一些“近亲”却生活在陆地上。这些脚部化石给了我们线索，他们和大象很可能有“血缘关系”。
13,000 years ago, two other members of the elephant family roamed this land. The manatees that swim in Florida's springs today are living relatives of ice age mammoths and mastodons.
13000年前，大象家族的两个分支来到这片陆地。今天在佛罗利达温泉里游荡的海牛就是冰河时代猛犸象和乳齿象一个分支的后裔。
Some of the bones found in these springs are easy to identify, but scattering among them are some more obscure remains. What kind of animal could this belong to? These rosettes are bony scales or scutes, similar to those that cover some reptiles today. But this is only one piece of the jigsaw. Imagine what the creature would have looked like when all these pieces were fitted together.
一些在温泉中发现的动物骨骼很容易进行辨认，但是他们之中零散的一些话是却很难辨认。这些化石属于什么动物？这些莲座丛是骨鳞，和今天的一些爬行动物很相似。但是这是这些化石残留中唯一的一片。想象一下，当把这些残片拼凑到一起，将会是个什么样的生物？
The scutes, around 2,000 of them, once formed the shell of a huge animal called the glyptodont. With its heavy weight exterior, the glyptodont looks like a reptile, like the alligator, which has been around for millions of years, long before the last ice age.
雕齿兽这种大型动物的外壳上就曾经有着2000片左右的骨鳞。它的外表十分沉重，雕齿兽看起来像是一种爬行动物，就像存活了数百万年的短吻鳄一样，但是雕齿兽存于距冰河时代末期前很长的时间。
英文文本来自普特英语，译文属可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可不得转载.
