纪录片《进化缺环》 第21期 植物化石（在线收听）

Fossil plants. By finding them alongside Devonian tetrapods Daeschler had made a vital breakthrough.

植物化石。把它们和泥盆纪四足动物放在一起，Daeschler有了一个重大的突破

He could now reconstruct for the very first time the true environment in which the first tetrapods had evolved.

现在他能第一次重建早期四足动物进化的真实环境

The Devonian wasn't the barren, treeless landscape spoken of in textbooks.

泥盆纪并非教科书中所写的那样荒凉一片、寸草不生

It was more like a rainforest.

却是和热带雨林一样

The most common thing we're finding is a tree-like plant. It actually has a long, tall trunk

我们发现的最多的是像树一样的植物，它们都有高大的枝干

and some people say these got up to 30m tall, so these were truly the first canopy sort of producing plants.

有人说它们能长到30米高，所以这些确实就是最早具有树冠的植物

We also find fern-like plants and a variety of other things and so we're really seeing a diversity

我们也发现了类似蕨类的植物和其它各种植物，可见诸如红丘这样的地方物种极其繁多

from a site like Red Hill and I think it's important because it's showing us that these were actually complex environments.

我认为它很重要，因为它向我们展示了一个相当复杂的生态环境

The textbooks had got it wrong again. The Earth may once have been barren,

教科书又一次错了，地球也许曾一度荒芜

but by the end of the Devonian it was very, very wet and densely forested with huge permanent rivers.

但到了泥盆纪末期，地表已变得异常湿润，森林茂密，大河长流

These were bordered by something completely new: swamp, that grey area between land and water.

分布着全新的生态环境——沼泽，陆地和水域之间的灰色地带

The first tetrapods had evolved in this wholly new eco-system,

最早的四足动物正是在这种全新的生态系统中进化

precisely the kind of thing that could indeed be a spur to major evolutionary change.

而恰好也是它激发了重要的进化过程。