超出想象的奇异生物

So-called Ediacaran organisms have puzzled biologists for decades.

所谓的埃迪卡拉纪（又名震旦纪）生物已经困扰生物学家们几十年了。

To the untrained eye they look like fossilized plants, in tube or frond shapes up to 2 meters long.

在外行眼里，它们看起来像化石一般的植物，呈管状或叶状，可以长到两米长。

These strange life forms dominated Earth’s seas half a billion years ago, and scientists have long struggled to figure out whether they’re algae, fungi, or even an entirely different kingdom of life that failed to survive.

这些奇异的生物形式在五十万年前统治了地球的海洋，科学家们一直以来都在努力搞清它们到底是藻类，真菌，还是一种完全不同的生命王国，它们后来走向了灭绝。

Now, two paleontologists think they have finally established the identity of the mysterious creatures: They were animals, some of which could move around, but they were unlike any living on Earth today.

如今，有两名考古学家认为他们终于鉴定清了这种神秘生物的属性：它们是动物，有些还可以移动，不过它们跟如今地球上的任何生物都不同。

Scientists first discovered the Ediacaran organisms in 1946 in South Australia’s Ediacara Hills.

1946年时，在南部澳大利亚的埃迪卡拉山，科学家们首次发现埃迪卡拉纪有机体。

To date, researchers have identified about 200 different types in ancient rocks across the world.

如今，研究员们已经在全世界范围内，从古岩层中鉴定出了 200种不同的类型。

Almost all appear to have died out by 541 million years ago, just before fossils of familiar animals like sponges and the ancestors of crabs and lobsters appeared in an event dubbed the Cambrian explosion.

它们几乎全部在五亿四千一百万年前就灭绝了，之后那些像海绵，还有蟹类和龙虾的祖先这样我们熟悉的生物化石，才在被称为“寒武纪大爆发”的时期出现。

One reason these creatures have proved so tricky to place in the tree of life is that some of them had an anatomy unique in nature.

这些生物很难在生命之树上归类的一个原因，就在于它们的解剖结构在自然界是与众不同的。

Their bodies were made up of branched fronds with a strange fractal architecture, in which the frond subunits resembled small versions of the whole frond.

它们的机体是由带有奇特建筑分形的分枝的叶组成的，其中这些小叶单元组合成整体叶的更小的版本。

Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Jian Han at Northwest University in Xi’an, China, have now found key evidence that the Ediacaran organisms were animals.

东京工业大学和英国的剑桥大学的詹妮弗.霍跃.卡西尔以及中国西安的西北大学的韩建，如今发现了证明埃迪卡拉纪有机体是动物的关键证据。

They analyzed more than 200 fossils of a 518-million-year-old marine species named Stromatoveris psygmoglena.

他们对一种海生的叫做春光虫的物种的超过200多件五亿以前八百万年前的化石进行了分析。

Paleontologists had previously concluded that the 10-centimeter-tall species was some sort of animal—in part, says Hoyal Cuthill, because it was found alongside other known animals, and all of the fossils are preserved in a similar way.

考古学家们以前下结论说这种10厘米高的物种是某种动物——从某种程度上说，霍跃.卡西尔说道，因为它是在其它已知的动物旁边发现的，而所有的化石的保存方式是类似的。

Hoyal Cuthill and Han argue S. psygmoglena was also an Ediacaran organism, a rare “survivor” that somehow clung on through the Cambrian explosion.

霍跃.卡西尔和韩先生认为春光虫也是一种埃迪卡拉纪的有机体，是一种以某种方式活过了“寒武纪大爆发”的罕见的幸存者。

“This branch, the Petalonamae, could well be its own phylum, and it apparently lacks any living descendants。” Hoyal Cuthill says.

“这些分枝，这些春光虫可能是属于它们独有的门，不过它如今显然并没有后裔了。”霍跃.卡西尔说道。

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