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Jurassic spark
侏罗纪思想火花
An intellectual revolution began in 1811 when Mary Anning, a 12-year-old living in Lyme Regis, a harbour town in south-west England, excavated the first fossil of a marine reptile, the Ichthyosaurus.
1811年，一场思想革命开始了，当时12岁的玛丽·安宁居住在英格兰西南部的一个港口小镇莱姆里杰斯，她挖出了一种海洋爬行动物的第一块化石，这种动物就是鱼龙。
It culminated in 1881 with the opening of the Natural History Museum in London, imperial capital of the world, by Richard Owen.
1881年，理查德·欧文在帝国主义世界的首都伦敦开设了自然历史博物馆，将这场革命推向了高潮。
Those seven decades spanned a change in thinking as profound as that triggered by the astronomers of the late Renaissance—and as disturbing to the established church. (In this case, the threatened church was that of England, not Rome.)
这场横跨七十年的思想变革与文艺复兴后期的天文学家所引发的变革一样深刻，对国家教会来说也一样令人不安。（这一次，受到威胁的是英格兰教会，而不是罗马教会。）
Fossils sparked a revelation of biblical proportions: God had not created the world in six days a few thousand years before, as so many believed.
化石引发了一个有关《圣经》的启示：上帝并没有像许多人相信的那样，在几千年前用六天时间创造了世界。
“Impossible Monsters” is a story about time—or, rather, two parallel stories. In one, time moves forward, as the players take turns making remarkable discoveries that help advance science and humans’ understanding of their place in the world.
《不可能的怪兽》是一个关于时间的故事，或者说，是两个平行故事。在其中一个故事中，时间向前推移，不同人物轮番上场，做出非同凡响的发现，帮助科学界和人类进一步理解自己在世界上所处的位置。
In the second, it moves backwards, as the years needed to accommodate the findings of geologists and naturalists expand from thousands, to hundreds of thousands, to millions, pushing the date of “Creation” further away.
在第二个故事中，时间向后移动，为了把地质学家和博物学家的发现纳入历史，所需的岁月从数千年延长到数十万年，再到数百万年，从而将“上帝创世”的日期往后推得更远。
In writing “Impossible Monsters”, the task of Michael Taylor, a historian, was to tell a much-told tale better than it had been told before. He has succeeded splendidly.
在写《不可能的怪兽》时，历史学家迈克尔·泰勒的任务是把一个讲过多遍的故事叙述得比以前更精彩。而他取得了辉煌的成功。
The cast is many and varied, including Anning, a lowly fossil-seller, who achieved international fame through her discoveries—Ichthyosaurus was but the first—yet was barred from joining the Royal Geological Society because of her sex.
书中的人物众多且五花八门，包括一个地位低下的化石销售商安宁，她因为发现化石而获得了国际声誉——鱼龙化石只是众多发现的第一个——但由于是女性而被禁止加入皇家地质学会。
Some of the characters are familiar, like Charles Darwin. But many are less well known, such as Alfred Russel Wallace, a collector and seller of tropical specimens, who devised the idea of natural selection independently.
有些人物为人熟知，比如查尔斯·达尔文。但许多人并不是那么出名，比如阿尔弗雷德·罗素·华莱士，他是热带标本的收藏家和商人，独立地提出了自然选择理论。
Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s self-appointed “bulldog”, became chief mover and shaker for all things official and scientific in Victorian Britain.
托马斯·赫胥黎自封为达尔文的“斗犬”，成为维多利亚时代英国的所有官方和科学事务的重要推动者。
But Mr Taylor also conveys a sense of just how risky it was to believe in and promulgate the new ideas tied to the rocks and tropical forests where people hunted for specimens.
但泰勒先生也传达了一种感觉，即相信和传播那些与石头、热带森林有关的新思想是多么危险，许多标本都是人们从热带森林里搜寻而来的。
Even Darwin, wealthy and well-connected (and at one point himself destined for the church), at first lived in fear of the disgrace that might accrue if his ideas became public.
即使是富有且人脉广泛的达尔文（他自己曾经也注定要去教会任职）起初也生活在恐惧中，担心一旦自己的思想被公开，可能会名誉扫地。
