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What a strange thing it must be to become a fossil.
恐龙变成化石是件多么奇妙的事情啊。
Say you live a full life for a Diplodocus dinosaur, swinging your enormously long tail across your Jurassic world for 70 or so years.
假如你是只梁龙，活了充实的一生，在侏罗纪世界摇摆着硕大无比的长尾巴大约70年的时间。
Then you die -- but in such extraordinary circumstances that, against all odds, your bones are buried and transformed over time into stone.
然后你死了--但死去的情况特殊，好巧不巧，骨骸被埋住，随着岁月流逝变成了石头。
Mountains rise and wear away around you. Rivers come and go. Glaciers rumble overhead. Your bones endure.
山峦在你身边隆起又蚀平。河川来了又去。冰川隆隆经过你头上。而你的骨头保存了下来。
Even stranger, a hundred or more million years later, volcanic activity comes to dominate the area.
更妙的是，1亿年或更久之后，火山活动主宰了这个地区。
When the superheated fluids eventually cool and drain away, your stony bones have become green, highlighted here and there with red patches like roasted meat.
等到过热的液体终于冷却、退去时，你石化的骨头变成了绿色，处处是一块块显眼的红色，像烤肉一样。
And then the strangest turn of all: You return to the surface after an absence of 150 million years, and there you're discovered, extricated, and reassembled by some unimaginable new species in a bizarre new world.
接下来的转折再奇妙不过了：你在阔别1亿5000万年后回到地表，在一个古怪的新世界里，某个超乎想像的新物种发现、解救、重组了你。
Step 1: discover and dig
第一步：发现、挖掘
A team from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC) first spotted the sauropod dinosaur they call Gnatalie in 2007 after erosion revealed a single leg bone beside a bluff in southeastern Utah.
2007年，犹他州东南部一座悬崖旁，有一根腿骨因侵蚀而暴露出来之后，洛杉矶自然史博物馆的一个团队首次发现了这只蜥脚类恐龙，他们称之为蚋塔莉。
What they found underneath brought them back to the dig site for nine more summers.
他们在地底下发现的东西，让他们重回挖掘地点，又待了九个夏天。
The jumble of bones -- Diplodocus, Camarasaurus, Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, and others -- had been swept together by the rivers of their day into a dinosaur logjam.
那堆骨头里有梁龙、圆顶龙、异特龙、剑龙等恐龙的骨头，被当时的河流卷走，统统混杂在一起。
Even the reconstructed specimen slated to go on display at the museum this fall is not a single dinosaur but combines parts from two or more individuals of the same species found at the site.
重建的样本预计今年秋天在博物馆登场，但就连那个样本的骨头也不是都来自同一只恐龙，而是由挖掘地点里两只以上的同物种个体的不同部位结合而成。
The identity of that species, which may be new to science, has yet to be determined.
那个物种有待鉴别，可能是科学上的新种。
But with its long neck and tail and four sturdy legs, it shares many of the characteristics of the genus Diplodocus.
不过它有长颈、长尾和结实的四肢，这许多的特征都和梁龙属相同。
The nickname Gnatalie came unromantically from the tiny gnats that maddened team members the first year of excavation.
“蚋塔莉这暖称一点也不浪漫，源自挖掘的第一年令团队成员苦不堪言的细小蚊蚋。
They scheduled later digs for high summer, preferring the risk of dehydration and heatstroke to gnat bites.
他们把之后的挖掘排在夏天最炎热的时候，宁可冒着脱水和中暑的风险，也不想被蚊蚋叮咬。
Among other routine hazards at the dig site, mountain lions left their tracks in the dirt, and rattlesnakes sometimes sheltered under tarps.
挖掘场还有其他常见的危险，譬如在泥地上留下脚印的美洲狮，响尾蛇有时也会躲在油布底下。
On one occasion a lightning bolt hit the top of a nearby bluff, and a lone juniper tree burst into flame. People scattered for shelter.
还有一次，一道闪电打中附近的悬崖顶，一棵孤零零的刺柏起火燃烧，众人四散寻找掩护。
Because the site was accessible, a long day's drive from Los Angeles, the museum team saw it as a chance to show people how dinosaur science gets done, with volunteers, donors, and students doing hammer-and-chisel work.
由于挖掘地点交通方便，离洛杉矶只有一天车程，所以博物馆团队认为这是很好的机会，可以让大家见识一下恐龙科学是如何进行的，提供志愿者、赞助者和学生亲手拿工具挖凿的体验。
Planning dinner one night, team members conducted a head count and realized they had 50 people in camp. For some, it was the first time they'd slept in a tent.
有一天晚上，团队成员在计划晚餐的时候数了人头，发现营地里有50人。有些人是这辈子第一次睡在帐棚里。
The abundance of specimens also complicated the dig.
样本丰富，也让挖掘工作更复杂。
"You're playing pick-up sticks with a bunch of dinosaur bones," says NHMLAC paleontologist Alyssa Bell. "They're all tangled and locked together."
洛杉矶自然史博物馆的古生物学家艾莉莎·贝尔说：“就像用一堆恐龙骨头在玩插竹签游戏。骨头全部交缠卡在一起。”
In 2014 the team discovered what turned out to be an entire neck, back, and pelvis still fused together in stone.
2014年，团队发现了新东西，是一块融合了完整的颈部、背部和骨盆的石头。
"I remember us just standing there scratching our heads and trying to figure out how on earth we're gonna get all these apart," says Bell.
贝尔说：“我记得我们就这么站在那里搔着头，思考我们究竟该怎么把这些东西分开来。”
The excavation process entails trenching around blocks of stone containing the fossils and digging under them, leaving temporary pedestals for support.
挖掘过程需要在含有化石的石块周围挖沟，并在其下方挖掘，留下临时基座作为支撑。
Jackets of burlap and plaster are placed around the fossils to protect them.
化石用粗麻布和石膏做成的外壳保护。
At the start, the crew managed to keep the jackets at a weight the workers could lift out by hand. But they soon progressed to jackets weighing a ton or more, requiring heavy machinery for the lifting.
一开始，团队设法把石膏套维持在工人可以徒手搬出来的重量。但石膏套的重量很快就增加到1公吨以上，需要使用重型机具才能举起。
When the time came to extract a giant pelvis, "they had ropes on either side and teams of people rocking it back and forth," says Stephanie Abramowicz, the museum illustrator at the dig.
史蒂芬妮·亚柏拉莫维兹是博物馆派往挖掘现场的插画师，她说，到了要把一块庞大的骨盆取出来时，“他们把绳子固定在两侧，好几组人来回摇动石膏套。”
The moment it broke free, there was a crack of thunder.
松脱出来的那一瞬间，发出雷电般的劈啪声。
"It was very clear Gnatalie was speaking to us, released from the ground, ready to live another life," says Abramowicz.
亚柏拉莫维兹说：蚋塔莉从地下释放出来，显然在和我们说话，准备开启新的一生。”
