侏罗纪搏击俱乐部 第148期:无底洞穴意味着死亡

The lion's senses are keen.Its whiskers can pick up vibrations.So it can sense animals as small as a mouse in pitch darkness.

拟狮的感官很敏锐。它的胡须能感知振动。所以它能在漆黑一片的情况下感知到和老鼠一样小的动物。

The lion is desperate, and the only way it can win is to get to the throat.

拟狮孤注一掷，它的唯一胜机在于能咬到喉咙。

With the last remaining strength he lunges towards the bear.

它用尽所剩的力气扑向短面熊。

The force of the impact knocks the bear backwards and the lion grabs the throat.

巨大的撞击力让短面熊倒向后面，拟狮咬住了它的喉咙。

The lion needs almost 20 kilos of meat a day to survive.Without it, it will quickly weaken.

拟狮每天需要吃下二十公斤肉才能生存。没有足够食物它会很快变弱。

The bear is able to regain his footing, and towers over its rival.

短面熊重新站立起来，压倒它的对手。

It throws the 750 pound Mega Lion with little effort.

它不费多大力气就将750磅重的拟狮甩开。

Unfortunately for the lion, the bear happens to throw it in direction of the cave.

这头拟狮很不幸，短面熊刚好把它朝地穴的方向扔去。

The cave is over 30 meters deep, a deadly drop.

地穴深达三十多米，这是死亡坠落。

It's a sheer drop to the bottom that nothing can survive.

这一下直接掉到洞底，没什么能够生还。

The herbivore bones that were found in the cave show no signs of predation, so this tells us that nothing that went into that cave lived to eat the bodies of the other victims.

在洞里发现的植食动物骨头没有被食用的迹象，所以这说明没什么能够活着进入洞穴吃掉其它牺牲者的尸体。

Although the cave meant certain death to animals, it would yield ground breaking benefits to paleontologists.

尽管洞穴对动物来说意味着死亡，这却给古生物学家们带来了突破性的好处。

The great thing about a cave is that it helps preserve the evidence, because the bones aren't exposed to the normal elements that can erode the facts and alter the clues, but that's of little comfort to the animals who happened to fall into it.

洞穴的一个好处就是它能保存证据，因为骨头没有暴露在通常的环境下，不会被侵蚀而损失线索，不过这对掉进洞里的动物们并不算安慰。

Having claimed the life of the Mega Lion, natural trap cave would continue to accumulate thousands of other victims over the next 10,000 years.

在让美洲拟狮殒命之后，这个自然陷阱穴在此后的一万年里会继续让成千上万的动物丧生。

The Mega Lion is not the only victim to fall prey to the trap.

拟狮并非陷阱的唯一牺牲品。

As the environments continued to get worse, even the apex predator, like the short-faced bear, would be forced to take advantage of any food source it could find.

随着环境继续恶化，就连短面熊这样的顶级掠食者，也被迫利用它能找到的任何事物来源。

And like the lion, it would have been lured into the cave with the promise of meat, but would have found death waiting at the bottom of the cave.

和拟狮一样，它会被找到肉的希望引诱进洞穴，但它会坠落洞底而丧生。

Giant predators like the Mega Lion and short-faced bear would eventually be unable to sustain themselves in the warmer climates, but they remain some of the largest and most ferocious mammals ever to walk the earth.

拟狮和短面熊这样的巨大的掠食者，逐渐无法在较暖的气候下喂养自己，不过它们仍是地球上出现过的一些最大最凶猛的哺乳动物。

The trap cave still holds thousands of bones, many have yet to be dug up.

陷阱地穴中仍有无数骨头，很多仍有待于挖掘。

It's one of the richest fossil finds in North America, and one of the greatest sources of mammal fossils in the world.

这里是北美化石最富集之地之一，也是世界上哺乳动物化石的最大来源之一。