Foundations Reading 11A

Chap 21

第21章

Reading 11A THE MAMMOTH'S TALE The strange animal in the ice looked like it was sleeping. Ten-year-old Kostia Khudi and his brother had never seen anything like it. Their father, a reindeer herder named Yuri Khudi, went to ask a friend for advice. But when he returned, the body had disappeared. Yuri soon found the animal's body leaning against a store in a nearby town. While he was away, his cousin had sold it to the store owner. Dogs had eaten part of the tail and ear. But it was still in almost "as close to perfect condition as you can imagine," says scientist Daniel Fisher. The police came to help. The body was taken by helicopter to a museum. The animal was a baby mammoth from the Ice Age. It was female, so the scientists named it after Yuri's wife. From Siberia, the mammoth was sent to the Netherlands and Japan. Scientists there studied it in detail. Studies of her teeth and tusks showed she was just one month old when she died. Research has also shown us the sequence of events that led to her death. Lyuba fell and died near a muddy river. The mud helped keep her body frozen until she was found, 40,000 years later. Scientists hope that further studies will help explain how mammoths like Lyuba lived. They also want to know why mammoths became extinct.

阅读11A 猛犸象的故事 冰里的奇怪动物看起来好像在睡觉。 十岁的Kostia Khudi和他的兄弟从未见过这样的事情。 他们的父亲是一位名叫尤里·库迪的驯鹿牧民，他去向一位朋友寻求建议。 但当他回来时，尸体已经不见了。 尤里很快发现这只动物的尸体靠在附近城镇的一家商店里。 他不在的时候，他的堂兄把它卖给了店主。 狗吃掉了尾巴和耳朵的一部分。 但科学家丹尼尔·费舍尔说，它仍然处于“你能想象的最接近完美的状态”。 警察来帮忙了。 尸体被直升机送往博物馆。 这只动物是冰河时代的猛犸象幼崽。 它是雌性，所以科学家们以尤里的妻子的名字给它命名。 猛犸象从西伯利亚被送往荷兰和日本。 那里的科学家对此进行了详细的研究。 对她的牙齿和象牙的研究表明，她去世时只有一个月大。 研究还向我们展示了导致她死亡的一系列事件。 卢巴在一条泥泞的河边摔倒并死亡。 泥土帮助她的身体保持冷冻状态，直到4万年后她被发现。 科学家们希望进一步的研究将有助于解释像卢巴这样的猛犸象是如何生活的。 他们还想知道为什么猛犸象灭绝了。

♪

♪