【明報專訊】21 types of dinosaur tracks have been unprecedentedly identified on a stretch of Australia's remote coastline — an area dubbed "Australia's Jurassic Park (侏羅紀公園)".
Thousands of dinosaur footprints have been found in the Kimberley region, in the north of Western Australia. The dinosaurs that left those prints were members of the sauropods, a family of huge long-necked herbivore (草食動物) that roamed the region 130 million years ago. Of the tracks found, 150 can be confidently assigned to 21 specific track types, representing 4 main groups of dinosaurs.
Dr Steve Salisbury, a palaeontologist (古生物學家) at the University of Queensland and lead author of a paper on the findings, spent more than 400 hours investigating and documenting dinosaur tracks in the area together with his team. He said it was the most diverse discovery of its kind in the world. "It is extremely significant, forming the primary record of non-avian dinosaurs (非鳥類恐龍) in the western half of the continent and providing the only glimpse of Australia's dinosaur fauna during the first half of the Early Cretaceous Period (白堊紀早期)," he said. "It's such a magical place — Australia's own Jurassic Park, in a spectacular wilderness setting."
(sources: Ming Pao, Channel News Asia, ABC)
■Photo Story
The largest footprint found in the area is about 1.7 m long.
■Quiz
Answer the following questions.
(Answers on next text)
1.Is the following sentence true or false?
The dinosaur footprints were found close to the sea. (True / False)
2.Find in paragraph one a word that is opposite in meaning to "near".
_____________________________________
3. Fill in the blanks with the correct numbers.
Among the dinosaur tracks, those of _________ track types were found, which represented __________ main groups of dinosaurs. It is believed that these are the tracks of dinosaurs that existed __________ million years ago.
4. The area is dubbed "Australia's Jurassic Park" because...
a. the film Jurassic Park was filmed there.
b. there is a theme park named Jurassic there.
c. massive dinosaur footprints were found there.
d. the dinosaur species found there is named Jurassic.
■English highway﹕ wilderness
A wilderness is a large area of land that has never been developed or farmed.
e.g. They went stargazing in the wilderness.
■Glossary
track (n) 足迹
unprecedentedly (adv) 史無前例地
roam (v) 漫步
fauna (n) 動物群
[Smarties' Power English Vol 184]
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