科学美国人60秒 发现鸟类化石与霸王龙同一时代（在线收听）

Who's your favorite superhero? Captain Marvel? Superman? Well, in a minute, you might just change your answer to the Wonderchicken.

你最喜欢哪位超级英雄?神奇队长?超人?嗯，很快你可能就会将答案改成神奇鸡。

(CLIP: "Yes, the Wonderchicken: Strange visitor from this planet. A 67-million-year-old fossil that's helping researchers piece together the bird family tree.")

(音频剪辑：“对，神奇鸡：来自这颗星球的陌生访客。一块6700万年前的化石正在帮助研究人员拼凑鸟类家族树。”)

An amateur fossil hunter dug up this specimen 20 years ago in Belgium. But it wasn't much to look at—just some damaged broken rocks with a few limb bones poking out—that is, until researchers recently decided to peer inside.

0年前，一位业余化石猎人在比利时挖出了这个化石。但它没什么可看的，只是有几块肢骨突出的破损石头，也就是说，直到最近研究人员决定窥视其内部，才发现其意义。

"We took these not very promising looking rocks and CT scanned them. And when we did that, we were amazed to discover that inside the rock was a beautiful, nearly complete, three-dimensionally preserved bird skull."

“我们用这些看起来不太有希望的石头进行CT了扫描。扫描时，我们惊奇地发现石头内部有个美丽的、几乎完整的、三维保存的鸟头骨。”

Paleobiologist Daniel Field of the University of Cambridge in the U.K.

英国剑桥大学的古生物学家丹尼尔·菲尔德说到。

The result was so striking that coming up with a nickname for this newly discovered species was easy.

这一发现如此惊人，以至于研究人员非常容易地就给这一新发现的物种起了个绰号。

"The combination of the shock and the chickeny nature of the fossil resulted in the name Wonderchicken."

“这块化石令人震惊之处，结合其内部的鸟类，就有了‘神奇鸡'这个名字。”

And the specimen isn't just special because of the incredibly preserved skull. The Wonderchicken is actually a record breaker.

这个标本的特殊性不仅仅是因为保留极为完好的头骨。神奇鸡真的打破了记录。

"So this is actually the oldest fossil ever found that's clearly a representative of the group of modern birds."

“这实际上是迄今为止发现的最古老的化石，而且其显然能代表现代鸟类组。”

The Wonderchicken walked the earth less than a million years before the asteroid impact that wiped out dinosaurs. In fact, this approximately 400-gram—or about seven eighths of a pound—bird would have been a contemporary of many of the best-known dinosaur species, like Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops.

神奇鸡在地球存在的时间，比小行星撞击地球导致恐龙灭绝要早不到100万年。事实上，这种重约400克或八分之七磅的鸟可能与霸王龙和三角龙等许多知名恐龙种类同一时代。

Even though great amounts of evolutionary history can now be deduced by studying the genomes of living species, fossils like this one still play a valuable role. For example, they can help pin down the date of branches in a family tree. The Wonderchicken fits into the bird family tree right around the split between chickenlike birds and ducklike birds.

即使现在通过研究现存物种的基因组可以推断出许多进化史，但这种化石仍发挥着有价值的作用。比如，这种化石可以帮助确定家族树分支的日期。神奇鸡处于鸟类家族树中鸡类和鸭类分界附近。

"So fossils provide irreplaceable information for evolutionary studies, because they provide the only direct evidence we'll ever have for how evolution has actually taken place."

“因此，化石为进化研究提供了不可替代的信息，因为它们为我们提供了唯一直接的证据，可以证明进化发生的方式。”

And given the incredible detail in this specimen, the team are hoping that there's still plenty to learn from this fossil fowl.

鉴于标本中令人难以置信的细节，研究团队希望这块鸟类化石能提供大量研究内容。

"So I think there's still a number of mysteries that this fossil is going to shed light on."

“因此，我认为这块化石仍有许多未解之谜需要揭示。”

Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Adam Levy.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是亚当·利维。