2007年VOA标准英语-Scientists Find Conclusive Evidence Velocirapto

By Jessica Berman
Washington
20 September 2007

Scientists say they have evidence that a ferocious¹ dinosaur² made famous by the movie Jurassic Park definitely had feathers.  Experts say the dinosaur, called Velociraptor, had a wing structure just like modern birds.  VOA's Jessica Berman reports.

A new study by American researcher Alan Turner and his colleagues provides the first conclusive³ evidence that Velociraptor, a sprinting⁴, vicious dinosaur that lived some 80 million years ago, had feathers.
 
The Velociraptor in the current study is estimated to have been one meter tall, 1.5 meters long and weighed just over 13 kilograms.

Turner, a graduate student at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and lead author of the study, says Velociraptor appears to have been a smaller creature than in Jurassic Park, but just as nasty. 

"It's sort of as if you scaled up a chicken and then gave it really nasty teeth and big claws on its feet," he said.

Fossils of Velociraptor found over the years in Liaoning province in northern China reveal bird-like characteristics, but there haven't been any feathers on the bones unearthed⁵ there.

One day, while examining the forearm, or ulna, of a Velociraptor dug up in Mongolia in 1998, Turner made an interesting discovery.

"I just happened to feel these couple of bumps along the backside. And it was like, 'Oh, that's very interesting,'" he recalled.  "And then I kind of let it pass. And then I was thinking about it more later on, and that's when I took it to the high powered microscopes and realized it has all these other features that you would expect to see if it was a quill⁶ knob."

The quill knobs found on Velociraptor are regularly spaced bumps along the ulna where flight or wing feathers would have been attached.

"And when you compare them to the ulna of a bird, you see that they correspond quite closely to these quill knobs," he added.  "These wouldn't have been flight feathers in the Velociraptor, because it's an animal that's much too big to have flown.  But it still shows that feathers were attached to the bone there."

Turner thinks Velociraptor might have used the feathers for show, to shield nests or to keep itself warm.

He says his team did not find quill knobs on other fossils of the bird-like carnivore, but that doesn't mean, he said, that Velociraptor did not have feathers. 

The discovery of Velociraptor quill knobs is reported in the journal Science.

1 ferocious   

adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的

参考例句：

• The ferocious winds seemed about to tear the ship to pieces.狂风仿佛要把船撕成碎片似的。
• The ferocious panther is chasing a rabbit.那只凶猛的豹子正追赶一只兔子。

2 dinosaur   

n.恐龙

参考例句：

• Are you trying to tell me that David was attacked by a dinosaur?你是想要告诉我大卫被一支恐龙所攻击？
• He stared at the faithful miniature of the dinosaur.他凝视著精确的恐龙缩小模型。

3 conclusive   

adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的

参考例句：

• They produced some fairly conclusive evidence.他们提供了一些相当确凿的证据。
• Franklin did not believe that the French tests were conclusive.富兰克林不相信这个法国人的实验是结论性的。

4 sprinting   

v.短距离疾跑( sprint的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Stride length and frequency are the most important elements of sprinting. 步长和步频是短跑最重要的因素。 来自互联网
• Xiaoming won the gold medal for sprinting in the school sports meeting. 小明在学校运动会上夺得了短跑金牌。 来自互联网

5 unearthed   

出土的（考古）

参考例句：

• Many unearthed cultural relics are set forth in the exhibition hall. 展览馆里陈列着许多出土文物。
• Some utensils were in a state of decay when they were unearthed. 有些器皿在出土时已经残破。

6 quill   

n.羽毛管；v.给（织物或衣服）作皱褶

参考例句：

• He wrote with a quill.他用羽毛笔写字。
• She dipped a quill in ink,and then began to write.她将羽毛笔在墨水里蘸了一下，随后开始书写。