恐龙化石旁惊现脚印 博古馆沉睡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.

发现一整具恐龙的骨骼是一回事，但是发现它被埋在自己的脚印之下却又是另外一回事。

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.

在一个有趣的发现中，波兰古生物学家发现了一个在一具1965年在蒙古发现的，具有八千万年历史的原角龙骨架旁边保存完好的脚印。

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.

这个环绕在岩石中的样本已经在波兰的一个博物馆中陈列了50年了，但是却从来没有任何人发现过这个脚印。

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

格里兹格斯·尼德韦德兹克和汤玛斯·司辛格在华沙的波兰科学院准备展览的时候有了这个意外的发现。

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

菲尔·曼尼博士，一位曼彻斯特大学的古生物学家，将这个发现描述为“相当震惊”和“极其有用”。

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.’

他告诉邮政在线说，“这是和之前相比最有用的脚印，因为他告诉我们关于恐龙躯体的形态，正如你看一个人的手部骨骼并将其手按进泥土中就能看出他那个只有相对粗大。”

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.

他解释说，在过去这么多年发现的化石中，这是第一次发现这样种类的，而且这对于其他生物学家来说也是一种警告。

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

不幸的是，在准备展览的时候，他们常常将骨架周围的石头扔到一边。

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

曼宁博士补充说，“如果人们希望未来有所发现的话，他们确实需要仔细寻觅。”

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

尼德韦德兹克和司辛格的发现在杂志《白垩纪研究》上面发表了。

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

原角龙是一种食草恐龙，体型和绵阳差不多大小。专家们都认为他们曾在白垩纪时期过着群居的生活。