外刊阅读冲刺练习：人类进化史 似曾相识

外刊阅读冲刺练习：人类进化史 似曾相识

洛基英语，中国在线英语教育领导品牌

Science and Technology

科技

Human evolution

人类进化史

You look familiar

似曾相识

Another piece of humanity's family tree is fitted into place

南方古猿sediba的发现填补了人类家族谱系的关键空白

THE opening scene of Mel Brooks's film "History of the World: Part One" dispenses with human origins in one line: "And the ape stood, and became man."

梅尔·布鲁克斯执导的电影"世界史：序幕"开场仅用一句话就概括了人类起源："类人猿直立起来，变成了人类。"

Would that it were that easy for palaeontologists to sort out.

要是古生物学家也能如此轻而易举地阐释人类进化的奥秘就好了。

The transition to humanity is generally agreed to have occurred between Australopithecus, a genus of small-brained, bipedal primates whose most famous member is a fossil nicknamed "Lucy", and the big-brained species Homo erectus.

人们普遍认为人类是由南方古猿和直立人之间的某个物种演化而来。南方古猿头部较小，属双足灵长类动物，其最有名的家族成员是一具被称做"露西"的化石，比较而言，直立人的头部就大多了。

But pinning down when precisely this took place, and which of the various australopithecinespecies were involved, has been challenging.

不过，要想确定确切的人类演化时间和哪些南方古猿物种参与了演化，仍是极具挑战性的课题。