纪录片《巨龙的奥秘》 第22期 研究焦油熔池（在线收听）

John Harris has been investigating these tar pits for the past 20 years.

John Harris过去20年中一直都在研究焦油熔池

What happened would be a horse or a ground sloth or a camel would wander along,

情况可能是一匹马、一只地懒，或是一头骆驼正在这里散步

and get stuck and... Just demonstrating here.

一不小心陷了进去，我来示范一下

Once it's in, it takes a great deal of strength to pull it out.

陷进去后，需要用很大力气，才能把它拔出来

And of course if an animal gets stuck on the surface like this,

因此一旦动物陷进这种地方

when it's trying to pull out one leg, it's pushing in three others.

当它们试着拔出一条腿时，其它3条腿就会越陷越深

And so very soon it will get totally immobilized.

很快它们就动弹不了了

The trapped animal would lure predators to the swamp, who would, in turn, become stuck.

受困的动物把掠食者引来沼泽，它们也跟着一块儿陷了进去

It would be meat on the hoof, waiting for the sabre-tooths and the dire wolves to come in and feed from it.

这是送到嘴边的肥肉，剑齿虎和恐狼赶过来吃它们，

And they would come in and, they in turn, get stuck.

结果也跟着落入陷阱

The down would come vultures to feed for a moment and they would get stuck.

然后秃鹫也飞下来吃，它们也陷进去了

In would come the flies, and they would get stuck, too.

后来苍蝇也过来吃尸体，它们同样难逃厄运

In pretty short order, you'd build up the example whole food chain.

所以在短期内，这里说不定已经有了一条食物链

Over time, hundreds of dinosaurs would have sunk into traps.

随着时间的推移，数百只恐龙落入了陷阱

Millions of years later, the tar and mud has turned to rock,

亿万年后，焦油和泥浆变成了岩石

the bones fossilized, and the site would look like any normal rocky bone bed.

骨骼变成了化石，这里也就成了很普通的化石场

If Currie's dig site was actually a prehistoric predator trap,

如果Currie的挖掘地点是一个史前掠食动物陷阱

it would destroy his theory that the tyrannosaurs lived and hunted in packs.

那将全盘否定他关于暴龙是集体生活和狩猎的观点

But how could the paleontologists tell?

那么，古生物学家又是如何解释的呢