2016年12月大学英语四级新闻听力练习(36)

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　　自2016年6月英语四级考试起，四级听力新添加了短篇新闻。相对的，听力的难度也有所增加。但是再难的题目也禁不住多多的练习！文都教育提醒各位考生，要打起精神来迎战12月四六级考试，万不可轻敌松懈~唯有地基牢固才有摩天大楼，以下是小编为各位考生们准备的四级新闻听力练习，各位赶紧get起来吧!
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听力材料：
　　New light has been thrown on the evolutionary linkbetween birds and dinosaurs. And it's fair to say it'sa very strong link. That's according to Dr. StephenBrusatte, a paleontologist at the University ofEdinburg. He is at the study to build the mostcomprehensive family tree of carnivorous dinosaursthat's ever been created. And it leads fromprehistoric times to the present day. My colleagueDan Damon asked him just how closely related are the birds we see around us to dinosaurs.
　　Birds are dinosaurs in the same way that elephants are type of mammal or frogs are type ofamphibian. Birds, chickens, humming birds—they are all living dinosaurs.
　　How do you make that link?
　　So we have lot of fossils now, a whole lot of fossils. And we've been finding more and more ofthem over the last 20 years or so. This is what prompted us to build this big family tree. So mycolleagues and I traveled around the world looking at a lot of dinosaurs, putting together thishuge data set. That tree shows us that there are so many features of living birds, things likefeathers and wishbones, and wings that didn't just evolve in birds, but they evolved in thedinosaur ancestors of birds. I think a lot of people think about evolution in terms of missinglegs. You know, there must be a link between monkeys and men or between dinosaurs andbirds. But that's not really how evolution works. The evolution of birds was a long gradualprocess, first feathers of all, then wishbones, then wings. Then these dinosaurs got smaller.And then they put it all together. The bird body plan was there. They were able to fly. And thenbang! Something was unlocked; birds took off. And birds survived the extinction that killed offthe dinosaurs and they are still around today, 10,000 of them.
　　Exactly 10,000 species. But they are birds. How did they survive? I mean, some of thedinosaurs must have survived when that, what was it, some kind of comet hit Florida.
　　And so that killed off most of the dinosaurs. Almost every dinosaur died expect for some birds.And why some birds were able to make it through? Well, it's probably due to a lot of reasons,but one of the reasons is because they could fly. Maybe because they were smaller, they couldgrow faster. But as we also found in this study, birds evolved faster than other dinosaurs. Oncethat bird body plan of feathers and wings, and wishbones all came together, it allowed birds tosimply change faster than other types of dinosaurs. Maybe that was a key to their success.
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　　【参考译文】
　　近日，科学家对于鸟类和恐龙之间的进化关系给出了新的阐释。爱丁堡大学古生物学者Stephen Brusatte博士正在研究搭建有史以来最全面的食肉恐龙族谱，时间为从史前至今。我的同事Dan Damon向他提问：我们今天见到的鸟类和恐龙之间有怎样密切的联系？
　　鸟类就是恐龙的一种，正如大象是哺乳动物的一种，青蛙是两栖动物的一种。鸟、鸡、雀鸟等都是活着的恐龙。
　　怎么证明两者之间的关联呢？
　　我们现在能看到大量的化石。而且在过去的20中，我们发现了越来越多的恐龙化石。这促使我们绘制这样一个恐龙族谱。为此，我和同事周游世界，观察大量的恐龙化石，形成数据集。恐龙族谱显示：鸟类的许多特征，如羽毛、叉骨和翅膀等还存在于它的恐龙祖先的进化过程中。关于进化，大多数人会想到腿的消失。毕竟猴子进化到人，恐龙进化到鸟类，都有这样一个过程，但进化并不完全是这个样子。鸟类的进化是一个漫长而渐进的过程，首先是羽毛，然后是叉骨，接着是翅膀。这样一来，恐龙的体积就变小了。然后鸟类的身体架构就形成了，而且它们已经具备了飞行的能力。突然有一天，鸟类挣脱了束缚，飞上了青天。它们逃过了恐龙灭绝的劫难，一万种鸟类生息繁衍至今。
　　是的，一万种。但是它们是鸟类，怎么存活下来呢？我的意思是，当年彗星撞击佛罗里达的时候，肯定还有一些恐龙存活了下来。
　　那一次，大多数恐龙都灭亡了，除了一些鸟类。那么，为什么这些鸟类能够存活下来呢？原因有很多，其中一条就是它们会飞。可能因为它们体积较小，所以长得快一些。但我们在这个研究中还发现，鸟类比其他恐龙进化得更快。它们一旦拥有了羽毛、翅膀和叉骨，就会比别的种类的恐龙变化得更快一些。也许这就是鸟类成功的关键因素之一。