英语听力：探索发现 2013-01-13 冰河新新州 Ice Age Oasis—14
时间：2018-12-27 作者：英语课 分类：探索与发现2013年
英语课
Some of this ice age dung was found beneath the skull 1 in the Aucilla. The dung contained plant remains 2 that tell us what the mastodon was browsing 3 on 13,000 years ago or more—a mixture of trees and grasses.
This suggests that ice age Florida was drier than it is today—a mix of woodlands and savanna 4 rather than swamps. And mastodon teeth found in the Aucilla held a more important revelation. The enamel 5 contains chemical signatures of a local soil, passed by the plants the mastodons ate. But some of the chemicals found in the Aucilla teeth could only have come from soil hundreds of miles further north. The inescapable conclusion is that these mastodons migrated, making a round trip of more than 400 miles every year. And since their dung also contains remains of summer fruits from the Aucilla region, they must have travelled north for the winter.
The question is, why? Why leave a place which as we have seen was abundant with food and a refuge from the cold? And why go north for the winter when most migrants move south? Perhaps the present climate can provide a clue.
Florida has a peculiar 6 seasonal 7 quirk 8. Although the winter months are cooler, they are also drier, much drier. Between October and February, there's almost no rainfall at all.
1 skull
n.头骨；颅骨
- The skull bones fuse between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.头骨在15至25岁之间长合。
- He fell out of the window and cracked his skull.他从窗子摔了出去，跌裂了颅骨。
2 remains
n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹
- He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
- The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。
3 browsing
v.吃草( browse的现在分词 )；随意翻阅；（在商店里）随便看看；（在计算机上）浏览信息
- He sits browsing over[through] a book. 他坐着翻阅书籍。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- Cattle is browsing in the field. 牛正在田里吃草。 来自《简明英汉词典》
4 savanna
n.大草原
- The savanna is also the home of meat-eaters--the lion,leopard,and hyena who feed on the grasseaters.大草原也是食肉动物的家乡--狮子、豹、鬣狗--它们都是以草食动物维持生命的。
- They sped upon velvet wheels across an exhilarant savanna.他们的马车轻捷地穿过一片令人赏心悦目的大草原。
5 enamel
n.珐琅，搪瓷，瓷釉；(牙齿的)珐琅质
- I chipped the enamel on my front tooth when I fell over.我跌倒时门牙的珐琅质碰碎了。
- He collected coloured enamel bowls from Yugoslavia.他藏有来自南斯拉夫的彩色搪瓷碗。
6 peculiar
adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的
- He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
- He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。