纪录片《地球劫难日》 第23期 格陵兰岩层（在线收听）

We were astounded by just how much, how much cliff there was to examine.

我们都很吃惊竟然要测定这么宽的崖壁。

The whole Permian extinction story seemed to be spread through tens of meters of cliff,

看起来这几十米的崖壁应该包含二叠纪生物大灭绝的完整故事，

and the fossils that we could collect were showing us a beautiful detailed story

收集到的化石能讲述更详细的故事情节，

that was telling us a lot more than we'd known previously about the timing of what was going on at this time.

告诉我们先前不知道的关于这一时期的更多信息。

Even to the naked eye, one thing was blindingly obvious.

即使用肉眼观察，有一点是显而易见的。

The meteor theorists had got the timing wrong.

天体碰撞论在时间上大错特错。

The Greenland rock showed that the extinction had been a gradual event.

格陵兰的岩层表明大灭绝是一个渐进的过程。

In fact, it appeared to drag on for tens of thousand of years.

事实上它显然延续了数万年。

We could see that the extinction wasn't occurring instantaneously,

我们看到大灭绝并不是突然发生的，

but in fact was spread over several, a certain amount of rock,

事实上它分布于好几个岩层，

so we could see it was being spread over a certain amount of time.

可见它一定持续了较长的一段时间。