纪录片《侏罗纪之谜》 第17期 超级季风（在线收听）

There is a word for this type of climate: monsoon,

这类气候有一个称谓，季风

but Judy's theory is that this was a monsoon like no other, a mega-monsoon.

Judy的观点是它不是一般季风，而是超级季风

The word monsoon comes from an Arabic word that means season,

“季风”这个词来自阿拉伯语，意思是季节

so a mega-monsoon is where that really goes to extremes.

超级季风则是非常极端的气候

This climate of extremes, veering from very wet to very hot and dry, was unique to the super-continent.

这类极端气候--从湿润多雨到酷热干旱，是超大陆的一大特点

One of the things that would have been characteristic of this very strong monsoonal system

必须提到一点，这种强大无比的季风系的特点

is that you would have had a similar climate over a very large part of the world,

表现为世界上大片地区都有类似的气候

so this would have been a world in which the environments were not particularly diverse.

也就是说当时世界上的环境并不是很多变

According to the theory, a uniform world led to uniform animals.

根据这种观点，相同的世界造就了相同的动物

This was why the early dinosaurs lacked variety

这也是早期恐龙种类很少的原因

and as long as the super-continent existed nothing much was going to change,

只要超大陆不复存在，很多情况就会发生变化

but then of course something did change.

当然，后来的确发生了变化

As the super-continent broke up areas that had been landlocked for millions of years would have been surrounded by water.

随着超大陆的崩解，原先封闭的内陆地区逐渐被水包围。