Walk through the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs with American Museum of Natural History's new 'Impact' exhibit

在美国自然历史博物馆的“撞击”展览中，参观小行星撞击导致恐龙灭绝的历史

NEW YORK — The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City has opened a new exhibition that takes a multidisciplinary perspective on the asteroid strike that ended the Cretaceous period and killed all the non-avian dinosaurs. The exhibit — aptly called "Impact" — chronicles what was, in the words of AMNH curator of paleontology Roger Benson, Earth’s "worst day of the last half-billion years."

纽约——位于纽约市的美国自然历史博物馆（AMNH）开设了一个新展览，从多学科角度讲述了小行星撞击事件，它结束了白垩纪时期，杀死了所有非鸟类恐龙。这次展览被恰当地称为“撞击”展览，用美国自然历史博物馆的古生物学馆长罗杰·本森的话说，它记录了地球“过去5亿年中最糟糕的一天”。

One spring day 66 million years ago, a rock from outer space slammed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula. The meteor was roughly the size of Mount Everest, and it struck with the force of 10 billion atomic bombs. Nearby forests instantly incinerated as atmospheric temperatures briefly soared to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Many animals, including large dinosaurs, were buried in ash — though some were able to escape by digging underground or diving underwater.

6600万年前的一个春日，一块来自外太空的岩石猛烈撞击了现在的尤卡坦半岛。这颗流星大约有珠穆朗玛峰那么大，它撞击的威力相当于100亿颗原子弹。当大气温度短暂飙升至500华氏度时，附近的森林立即化为灰烬。包括大型恐龙在内的许多动物都被埋在火山灰中，尽管有些动物能通过挖地或潜入水下逃生。

The tremendous impact also flung a mushroom cloud of ash and dust into the atmosphere, eventually shrouding the planet in a cold gloom. Tiny glass beads rained down as far away as Wyoming. At the same time, the impact triggered landslides, earthquakes and tsunamis around the world.

巨大的撞击还将火山灰和灰尘组成的蘑菇云抛入大气层，最终将地球笼罩在寒冷的黑暗中。微小的玻璃珠如雨点般落在遥远的怀俄明州。与此同时，这次撞击引发了世界各地的山体滑坡、地震和海啸。

The scene was nothing short of apocalyptic. "It sounds like science fiction or the stuff of Hollywood movies," Benson told a small crowd of reporters at a preview press event. But piecing together the story of this violent end to the age of dinosaurs has been a centuries-long, interdisciplinary process.

这一幕简直就是世界末日。“这听起来像科幻小说或好莱坞电影的内容，”本森在预览新闻发布会上对一小群记者说。但是将暴力终结恐龙时代的故事拼凑起来是一个长达几个世纪的跨学科过程。

The first hint that something strange happened at the end of the Cretaceous period was the K-Pg boundary layer, a dark stripe of clay in the sedimentary rock record above which dinosaur fossils are absent. This layer was first recognized by geologists in the late 1700s and early 1800s. However, its exact cause — and geologic significance — remained a mystery until the 1980s. Only then did planetary scientist Walter Alvarez and his father, physicist Louis Alvarez, discover the K-Pg boundary layer contained an astonishingly high concentration of iridium, an element that is scarce on Earth's surface but abundant in space rocks. The only plausible explanation? Our planet was struck by an asteroid millions of years ago.

白垩纪末期发生的奇怪事情的第一个线索是K-Pg边界层，这是沉积岩记录中的一条深色粘土条纹，上面没有恐龙化石。地质学家在18世纪末和19世纪初首次发现了这一地层。然而，直到20世纪80年代，它的确切原因和地质意义仍然是个谜。直到那时，行星科学家沃尔特·阿尔瓦雷斯（Walter Alvarez）和他的父亲——物理学家路易斯·阿尔瓦雷斯（Louis Alvarez）才发现K-Pg边界层含有浓度惊人的铱，这种元素在地球表面很稀少，但在太空岩石中却含量丰富。唯一合理的解释是什么？我们的星球在几百万年前被一颗小行星撞击。

It was a decisive blow to another popular scientific theory at the time — the concept of gradualism, which holds that geological and evolutionary changes only unfold slowly and over long periods of time. "It represented a paradigmatic shift in people’s thinking," Neil Landman, a curator of fossil invertebrates at AMNH, told Space.com.

这是对当时另一种流行的科学理论——渐进主义概念的一个决定性的打击，该概念认为地质和进化变化只是在一段很长时间内缓慢进行的。美国自然历史博物馆无脊椎动物化石馆长尼尔·兰德曼(Neil Landman)告诉Space.com，“这代表了人们思维的范例性转变。”

Since then, researchers from every corner of science have helped piece together our current understanding of the event. Meteorite experts pinpointed the impact site: the Chicxulub crater in Mexico. Invertebrate paleontologists identified widespread ocean acidification based on the mass deaths of tiny creatures called foraminifera. And evolutionary biologists and paleobotanists detailed life's recovery through the fossil record.

从那时起，来自科学各个角落的研究人员帮助拼凑了我们目前对这一事件的理解。陨石专家准确指出了撞击的地点在墨西哥的希克苏鲁伯陨石坑。无脊椎动物古生物学家根据被称为有孔虫的微小生物的大量死亡，确定了广泛的海洋酸化。进化生物学家和古植物学家通过化石记录详细描述了生命的恢复过程。

"It's been a tremendous coalescence of ideas," Denton Ebel, a meteorite expert at AMNH, told Space.com.

美国自然历史博物馆的陨石专家丹顿·埃贝尔(Denton Ebel)告诉Space.com：“这是一个巨大的想法融合。”

The exhibit walks guests through the event as it unfolded chronologically. First, visitors encounter panoramas depicting life at the end of the Cretaceous. In one, a massive mosasaur hunts a long-necked plesiosaur, both members of marine reptile lineages that died out after the asteroid impact. Across the way, a triceratops lumbers through a prehistoric forest alongside turtles, primitive mammals, small dinosaurs and toothed birds.

展览将带领参观者按时间顺序参观了解这一事件。首先，游客们会看到描绘白垩纪末期生活的全景图。在其中一个场景中，一只巨大的沧龙在捕食一只长颈蛇颈龙，它们都是在小行星撞击后灭绝的海洋爬行动物。在路上，一只三角龙与海龟、原始哺乳动物、小型恐龙和有牙齿的鸟类一起笨拙地穿过史前森林。

Then, visitors move into a small theater to watch a 6-minute video detailing the damage wrought by the meteor strike. Finally, the exhibit highlights the aftermath of the destruction, showing life's slow recovery and how new organisms, like mammals, moved in to fill the niches left by the dinosaurs’ extinction.

然后，游客们走进一个小剧院，观看一段6分钟的视频，该视频详细介绍了流星撞击造成的破坏。最后，展览重点展示了毁灭的后果，展示了生命的缓慢恢复，以及哺乳动物等新生物如何进入填补恐龙灭绝留下的生态位。

Ultimately, Benson said he hopes guests leave with a sense of life's ephemerality, as well as its resilience. We are currently living through another mass extinction, one less acute than the end of the Cretaceous, but potentially no less deadly. This time, however, humanity is the asteroid — and we have a chance to change our impact.

最终，本森说，他希望客人离开时能感受到生命的短暂和韧性。我们目前正在经历另一次大灭绝，虽然没有白垩纪末期严重，但潜在的致命性丝毫不减。然而，这一次，人类是小行星——我们有机会改变我们的影响。

"We live on a changing planet," said Benson. "Rates of species extinction over the last 100 years or may be comparable to those that occurred during mass extinction events of the past. But we still have time."

“我们生活在一个不断变化的星球上，”本森说。“过去100年的物种灭绝率可能与过去大灭绝事件期间发生的物种灭绝率相当。但我们还有时间。”

The exhibit opened to the public on Nov. 17.

该展览于11月17日向公众开放。