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Step 2: prep bones
第二步：制备骨头。
The next stop for bones coming out of the dig was the museum's prep lab in Los Angeles.
挖掘出的骨头，第二站是洛杉矶博物馆的制备实验室。
The fossils were challenging, says Doug Goodreau, who runs the lab, because the surrounding material was like cement.
实验室主任道格·古德劳表示，这些化石很有挑战性，因为包裹化石的材料就像水泥一样。
Preparators used an angle grinder to chunk away excess stone, with sparks and stone chips flying, as well as hammers, chisels, and dental tools for more delicate work. Another essential tool: an eye for the unexpected.
制备人员用手持砂轮机削去多余的岩石，火星与石屑飞散，他们也用锤子、凿子和牙医工具做更细腻的雕琢。另一种不可或缺的工具是眼光，能注意到意料之外的东西。
"Each jacket can be a quarry unto itself," says Goodreau.
古德劳说：“每个护套本身都可以当成是一座挖掘场。”
Bones, teeth, and other bits must be patiently mined from the matrix.
骨头、牙齿和其他碎屑必须耐心地从基质中挖掘出来。
Work on one pelvis, and on bones discovered alongside it, took the better part of a year.
处理一个骨盆，和骨盆旁发现的其他骨头，就要花上大半年的时间。
As many as six preparators at a time worked to expose fine details, using miniature jackhammers called zip scribes and micro-sandblasters called air abraders. It sounded, says Goodreau, like a beehive buzzing.
同一时间会有多达六名制备人员，用小型手钻机和微型喷砂机，清理出精细的细节。古德劳说，现场听起来像有个蜂巢在嗡嗡作响。
The last bit of prepping was to fill flaws and gaps with an epoxy putty close to the color of the bone but different enough to distinguish restored from original material.
最后一项准备工作，是用塑钢土填补瑕疵和缺口。塑钢土的颜色要接近骨头，但差异又足以区分复原材料和原本的骨头。
Step 3: reconstruct skeleton
第三步：重建骨架
In the summer of 2023, in a small Canadian town on the north shore of Lake Ontario, 2,600 miles from the Los Angeles museum, Gnatalie's bones lay in shallow wooden boxes in a back room at Research Casting International (RCI), a firm specializing in rebuilding dinosaurs for museums.
2023年夏天，安大略湖北岸离洛杉矶2600英里的一座加拿大小镇上，在专门替博物馆重建恐龙的铸件研究国际公司（RCI）的一个储藏间里，蚋塔莉的骨头收在浅浅的木箱中。
Some bones rested on beds of foam, others on sand, each with a manila card detailing its place in the coming reconstruction.
有些骨头摆在泡沫垫上，有些在砂子上，每块骨头都附有一张标签卡，详述在之后重建时的位置。
In a meeting room upstairs, staff from the museum and from RCI were working through details of the mount.
楼上的会议室里，博物馆和RCI的员工正在一一确认标本的细节。
It would measure about 75 feet long, on display in the grand entry hall of a new wing of the museum.
它的长度约75英尺，将展示在博物馆新展区宏伟的入口大厅。
But at the moment, it appeared that six feet of the head and neck would poke through a wall into the next room.
不过，当时看来，头颈部会有6英尺穿墙到隔壁展室去。
They debated alternative positioning, but every move seemed to be constrained by architecture.
他们讨论改成其他姿势，但似乎都会受制于建筑。
Too far one way and the head might miss key ceiling anchor points. Too far the other and the tail would intrude on an emergency exit.
往一个方向移太远，头就可能错过关键的天花板固定点。往另一个方向太远，尾巴又会妨碍紧急逃生出口。
Despite what architects and designers imagined, the skeleton was "not just a model you can make go any way you want," says paleontologist Luis Chiappe, director of the museum's Dinosaur Institute, who served from the start as leader (and head chef) at the dig.
古生物学家路易斯·奇亚培是博物馆恐龙研究所所长，一开始就是挖掘现场的负责人（也是大厨）。奇亚培说，恐龙骨架和建筑师与设计师想像的不同，“并不是可以随意摆布的模型。”
But the challenge did not seem to leave anyone flustered, insuperable obstacles being standard in paleontology.
不过古生物学对难以克服的阻碍见怪不怪，所以这项挑战似乎没有让任何人感到慌乱。
Then someone announced, a little meekly, that different design software programs had been miscommunicating: The dinosaur's head wouldn't poke through the wall after all.
然后有人有点怯生生地宣布，不同的设计软件程序之间发生了沟通错误：恐龙的头其实不会穿墙而出。
But there were plenty of real, rather than imagined, problems to solve.
不过仍有许多实际（而非想像中）的问题要解决。
A large section of spine crushed and twisted during those 150 million years underground presented a major issue, for instance.
比方说，有一个大问题是埋藏在地下的1亿5000万年间，一大段脊椎被压碎扭曲了。
Installed as is, it threatened to bend the spine in a way that would distort the entire mount.
照原样陈设的话，脊椎曲折的状况可能会让整个标本变形。
In the end, Chiappe opted to have RCI scan those vertebrae and produce uncrushed, 3D-printed substitutes for a more natural look.
最后，奇亚培选择让RCI扫描那些脊椎骨，制作未被压碎的3D列印代替品，组合成比较自然的外观。
The real bones would be displayed below, as part of the exhibit's message about the challenges of getting from dig to exhibition hall.
真正的骨头会陈列在下方，成为展览信息的一部分，传达出从挖掘现场到展览大厅的层层挑战。
Step 4: mount for display
第四步：装设展示
Thousands of decisions and many months later, the RCI team set to work mapping parts and building corresponding steel structures to support them.
经过数以千计的决策和许多个月之后，RCI团队着手标定构造的位置，打造相应的钢制支撑结构。
A thick-walled steel post for the pelvis and the back legs went up first. Then came a horizontal steel armature following the natural curve of the spine.
首先立起的是支撑骨盆和后腿用的厚钢柱。然后是随着脊椎自然弧度制成的钢制水平支架。
The reconstruction took months of painstaking labor, and none of it was permanent.
辛苦的重建工作耗时好几个月，但没有一个部件是永久固定的。
Instead, the sections of armature slid together, or apart, in a neat stub-and-socket system.
支架的每个区段都能通过整洁的接头插孔系统接上或滑开。
Steel holders attached each bone to the larger structure more firmly than in the living animal -- but in such a way that any bone, or all of them, could be removed for repair or research.
钢架把每块骨头连向更大的结构，比在活体动物体内更牢固--但是设计成每块骨头都能拆下维修或研究。
It would take just a few turns with an Allen wrench, as if it were all an elaborate piece of ready-to-assemble household furniture.
只需用六角扳手拧几下就行了，就好像它是一件精美的、随时可以组装的家用家具。
When everything was complete, the bones and steel were disassembled, packed in shipping crates, and trucked back across the continent to Los Angeles.
大功告成后，骨骼和钢架被拆解装进货箱，用卡车从加拿大东南部运回洛杉矶。
There, on a plinth specially designed for this moment, the parts are coming together, more quickly this time.
到了那里，就在为这一刻特制的基座上开始把各个部分拼起来，这次速度比较快了。
Going on two decades since their first sighting, the dinosaurs blended in this mount are rising up into the exhibition space they will henceforth dominate.
自第一次被发现以来，已经过去了20年，混合组成这个标本的恐龙被抬上展示空间，今后将占据展览空间的主导地位。
Gnatalie's new life, as terror and teacher to our upstart species, is beginning at last.
蚋塔莉新的一生终于要开始了，以他令人震慑的样貌，成为我们这个新兴物种的老师。
