恐龍化石旁驚現腳印 博古館沉睡50年

It’s one thing to find a whole dinosaur skeleton, but quite another to discover it’s been buried with its own footprint.
　　發現一整具恐龍的骨骼是一回事，但是發現它被埋在自己的腳印之下卻又是另外一回事。

In a unique find, Polish palaeontologists found a perfectly preserved print next to the skeleton of an 80million-year-old Protoceratops, which was dug up in 1965 in Mongolia.

在一個有趣的發現中，波蘭古生物學家發現了一個在一具1965年在蒙古發現的，具有八千萬年歷史的原角龍骨架旁邊保存完好的腳印。

The specimen, complete with surrounding rock, had been on display for the past 50 years at a museum in Poland, but amazingly no one had spotted the footprint.

這個環繞在岩石中的樣本已經在波蘭的一個博物館中陳列了50年了，但是卻從來沒有任何人發現過這個腳印。

Then Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki and Tomasz Singer prepared it for display at the Polish Academy of Sciences in warsaw and made the extraordinary chance discovery.

格里茲格斯·尼德韋德茲克和湯瑪斯·司辛格在華沙的波蘭科學院準備展覽的時候有了這個意外的發現。

Dr Phil Manning, a palaeontologist at the University of Manchester, describes the find as ‘gobsmackingly amazing’ and also ‘bloody useful’.

菲爾·曼尼博士，一位曼徹斯特大學的古生物學家，將這個發現描述爲“相當震驚”和“極其有用”。

He told MailOnline: ‘This was the last footprint that it ever made and it’s so useful because it tells us about the geometry of the animal’s flesh, in the same way that if you took a human skeleton hand and pressed it into mud you’d be able to tell something about how thick the fingers were.’

他告訴郵政在線說，“這是和之前相比最有用的腳印，因爲他告訴我們關於恐龍軀體的形態，正如你看一個人的手部骨骼並將其手按進泥土中就能看出他那個只有相對粗大。”

He explained that out of millions of fossils found all over the world, this is the first discovery of its kind and should serve as a warning to other palaeontologists.

他解釋說，在過去這麼多年發現的化石中，這是第一次發現這樣種類的，而且這對於其他生物學家來說也是一種警告。

Unfortunately, they often discard surrounding rock from skeletons while preparing them for displays.

不幸的是，在準備展覽的時候，他們常常將骨架周圍的石頭扔到一邊。

Dr Manning added: ‘It should mean that if people are excavating a find in the future they should be on the lookout.’

曼寧博士補充說，“如果人們希望未來有所發現的話，他們確實需要仔細尋覓。”

Niedzwiedzki and Singer's discovery was reported in the journal Cretaceous Research.

尼德韋德茲克和司辛格的發現在雜誌《白堊紀研究》上面發表了。

The Protoceratops was a vegetable-eating dinosaur about the size of a sheep that experts believe lived in herds during the Cretaceous Period.

原角龍是一種食草恐龍，體型和綿陽差不多大小。專家們都認爲他們曾在白堊紀時期過着羣居的生活。