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听力文本Recording 27
录音27
Good morning, everyone. My name is John and I'm a palaeontologist.
大家早上好，我叫约翰，我是个古生物学家。
Now, when most people hear that, they immediately get an image of an old professor studying dried-up dinosaur bones or else they think of a great adventurer from the movies!
当绝大多数人听到这句话时，他们脑海里马上浮现出一个景象：一位老教授在研究干瘪的恐龙骨头，或者有些人会认为这是电影里才有的冒险家。
Well, I'm neither. But I would like to talk to you today about how I came to he a palaeontologist and the reason I believe it is an important job.
我两者都不是。但今天我想告诉你们我是怎么成为一个古生物学家的，以及我认为这项工作很重要的原因。
All my life, my main interest has been the environment. So, I actually started out as an ecology student.
我的一生中，主要的兴趣都集中在环境方面。所以，我其实一开始是生态学系的学生。
As a part of my degree course, I had to do a compulsory unit on extinction and a lecturer visiting from another university gave us a talk on Australia's extinct animals.
作为我学位课程的一部分，我必须修读一节动物灭绝方面的必修课，一位来自其它大学的讲师来访问，给我们讲了澳大利亚的绝种动物。
One of the animals he talked about was called the Diprotodon. It's an ancestor of the modern Australian wombat.
他讲到的其中一种动物叫巨型袋鼠。这是现代澳大利亚袋熊的祖先。
He described this enormous animal crossing ancient lakes, getting stuck in the mud and becoming part of the fossil record, which is what we call the preserved remains of animals and plants that we find.
他描述了这只巨型动物穿过古老的湖泊，困在了淤泥中，变成了化石的一部分，我们称之为发现的动植物保存下来的遗迹。
And I was fascinated, so fascinated that I immediately changed courses.
我深深对此着迷，太着迷了，以至于我马上就转换了课程。
But palaeontology isn't all easy going.
但古生物学并不是那么容易的。
The very first field trip I went on was pretty awful.
我的第一次实地考察就糟糕透了。
We went to an outback fossil site and we were digging in extreme conditions.
我们去了内地一处化石遗址，我们在极端条件下进行挖掘。
I've learned since then that that's pretty standard for work like this.
自此之后，我明白了，这样的工作是再平常不过的。
But to make matters worse, after five days, I'd found nothing.
但更糟糕的是，五天以后，我什么都没找到。
I was getting really disheartened and I was starling to regret my decision, when on the last day of the trip, I was digging into the bank of an ancient dried-up riverbed and I found a funny—looking piece of rock.
我备受打击，开始后悔自己的决定了，（谁知）在考察的最后一天，我在挖掘一处古老的河床河岸，我找到了一块长得很奇怪的石头。
Inside it was a tooth from a giant kangaroo. Finding that one Fossil made me realise that this was a field I really wanted to continue working in.
在石头里面是一只巨型袋鼠的牙齿。找到了这一块化石，让我明白了，这是一个我想一直工作下去的领域。
