题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通
山东省2018-2019学年高二下学期英语3月阶段检测联合考试试卷
About 150 million years ago, in Montana, a young dinosaur roamed through a land. Not yet five years old, the long-necked creature somehow ended up buried in a violent and muddy flood, forever freezing it in adolescence.
Now, researchers have found this potentially record-setting dinosaur. After uncovering the remains, the scientists argue that the skull (烦骨) is the smallest yet found from a group of long-necked dinosaurs called Diplodocus (梁龙). The little fellow even has a nickname: Andrew, after Andrew Carnegie, who funded the research, and there is a Diplodocus species named after him.
With its skull just 10 inches across, researchers' best guess is that Andrew was a juvenile Diplodocus—an especially rare find. While more than a hundred Diplodocus samples have been discovered, their skulls are much rarer. Fewer than a dozen have been dug up to date. If the researchers' reconstruction is correct, Andrew's skull could be the smallest and least mature Diplodocus skull ever found, potentially providing insights into the dinosaur's development.
Kristi Curry Rogers, a paleontologist at Macalester College in Minnesota doesn't fully agree with the findings because of the poor preservation of the fossil (化石). Andrew's skull is missing parts of the cheek, palate and lower jaw, plus the fossils are slightly pressed. These problems make it hard to reconstruct the skull, let alone infer the dinosaur's behavior from it.
"The researchers don't address the damage of the skull or the missing components of the face in any great detail, which could easily change the explanations," she said in an email.
For now, Diplodocus is the best guess for Andrew's identity, but it could also be an unknown species. To help settle the debate, Andrew's skull is currently being 3-D scanned for future research.
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