见识一下，世界上比较大的恐龙脚化石
如今，美国的黑山(Black Hills)地区因为像戴德伍德(Deadwood)和拉什莫尔山(Mount Rushmore)这样的旅游胜地而闻名，但是大约1.5亿年前，它是已知的一种最大的恐龙的家园。这种恐龙属于蜥脚类动物，拥有长长的脖子和尾巴。这些食草性的巨型恐龙，如同雷龙和梁龙一样，是地球上存在过的最大陆地动物。
The foot described in a new scientific paper recently published in the open-access journal PeerJ -- the Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences was excavated in 1998 by an expedition from the University of Kansas, with Anthony Maltese, lead author of the study, as member of the crew. As he writes, it was immediately apparent that the foot, nearly a meter wide, was from an extremely large animal -- so the specimen was nicknamed "Bigfoot."
最近新发表在开放获取期刊《PeerJ——生命与环境科学杂志》(《PeerJ -- the Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences 》)上的一篇科学论文中，描述了这只脚。1998年，堪萨斯大学(University of Kansas)的一支由安东尼·马尔泰塞(Anthony Maltese)领导的考察队挖掘了这只脚。就在他写论文的时候，他们忽然发现了这只脚，它几乎有一米宽。显然它来自一种非常巨大的生物，这个标本因此被戏称为“大脚怪”。
Photo courtesy of the KUVP archives
Now, after detailed preparation and study, Maltese and his international team of researchers from the USA, Switzerland, and Germany identified it as belonging to an animal very closely related to Brachiosaurus, famous for its appearance in the 1993 film Jurassic Park.
现在，经过详细的准备和研究，Maltese和他的来自美国、瑞士和德国的国际研究小组确认它与一种因出现在1993年的电影《侏罗纪公园》中而闻名的动物——腕龙有着非常近的亲缘关系。
Anthony Maltese, Emanuel Tschopp, Femke Holwerda, and David Burnham used 3D scanning and detailed measurements to compare Bigfoot to sauropod feet from numerous species. Their research confirmed that this foot was unusually large. According to Holwerda, a Dutch PhD student at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Germany, comparisons with other sauropod feet showed that Bigfoot was clearly the largest dinosaur foot discovered to date.
Anthony Maltese, Emanuel Tschopp, Femke Holwerda和David Burnham使用3D扫描和详细的测量来将大脚怪与各种不同的蜥脚类动物的脚相比较。他们的研究证实了这只脚确实异常的大。来自于路德维希马克西米利安大学(the Ludwig Maximilians University，位于德国慕尼黑)的荷兰博士霍韦达(Holwerda)说，与其他蜥脚类动物的脚相比，这只大脚显然是迄今为止发现的最大的恐龙脚。
It also confirmed that brachiosaurs inhabited a huge area from eastern Utah to northwestern Wyoming, 150 million years ago. "This is surprising," says Tschopp, a Swiss paleontologist working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, "many other sauropod dinosaurs seem to have inhabited smaller areas during that time."
它也证实了1.5亿年前腕足类恐龙生活在从犹他州东部到怀俄明州西北部的广泛区域。“这令人惊讶，”在纽约美国自然历史博物馆工作的瑞士古生物学家Tschopp说，“在那段时间，许多其他的蜥脚类恐龙的栖息地似乎更小。”
According to Maltese, who was part of the original University of Kansas team in 1998 but is now at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park, Colorado, the rock outcrops that produced this fossil hold many more "fantastic dinosaur skeletons," and the research team hopes to continue their studies on fossils from there.
Maltese原先是1998年堪萨斯大学的考察团队的一员,但现工作于地处科罗拉多州的落基山恐龙资源中心,这里出土了许多包含了“奇特恐龙骨架”的化石，他的研究团队希望能够继续研究这里的化石。
