Whether dinosaurs are warm blooded animals托福听力原文翻译及问题答案

Whether dinosaurs are warm blooded animals托福听力原文翻译及问题答案，今天中国教育在线就来为大家分析这个问题。

一、Whether dinosaurs are warm blooded animals托福听力原文：

Listen to part of the lecture in a biology class.

Professor:Until about 30 years ago,scientific opinion was pretty much unanimous in thinking that dinosaurs were cold-blooded creatures,and not warm blooded like mammals and birds.What are these terms cold-and warm-blooded mean?

Well,they are imprecise terms,a little bit inaccurate,but for the sake of consistency,I’ll continue to use them.

Warm-blooded animals,or technically,endothermic animals,are animals that use their own metabolism to maintain a relatively high,generally constant body temperature.They generate their own heat,whereas cold-blooded animals,uh,technically called endothermic animals,cold-blooded animals rely on the environment primarily to regulate their body temperature.And their body temperature can actually vary a great deal depending on the temperature surrounding them.

Now,as I said,mammals and birds are warm-blooded creatures,and we being mammals,you’re familiar with,you know,your body stays pretty much the same temperature all the time,whereas if you’ve ever seen,say,snakes or lizards you know,basking in the sun on the rock,you can see the characteristic feature of a cold-blooded creature that is using the environment to help regulate its body temperature.

As I said,until about 30 years ago,dinosaurs were,because they seem to most closely resemble reptiles,they were thought to be cold-blooded.Then about 30 years ago a number of scientists began to suggest the possibility that dinosaurs might in fact be warm-blooded.This was very exciting for a variety of reasons.Warm-blooded creatures are closer to us.They are more active.They move faster.They can live in a wider range of environments than cold-blooded creatures.So a lot of scientists kind of got on this bandwagon for warm-blooded dinosaurs.But unfortunately,a lot of the evidence for dinosaurs possibly being warm-blooded is indirect.Among the pieces of evidence is that the fossilized remains of dinosaurs have shown that certain kinds of dinosaurs had feathers.

Now,feathers in birds,one of their main functions,apart from helping certain birds to fly,is that they are an insulator.They preserve body heat,so by analogy,some people are argued,well,ok,if they were feathered dinosaurs,maybe they had feathers for insulation.Yes,maybe.But maybe not.

Another piece of indirect evidence is that some dinosaurs,uh,well,some dinosaur remains have been found in areas,latitudes that today have arctic climates and might in fact had very cold climates at the time that the dinosaurs were living there.It’s hard to function as a cold-blooded creature in an arctic climate.Unfortunately,we don’t have exact climate information.It’s only been suggested that these areas might have been as cold as they are today.So again,this is not,you know,not a knockdown argument in favor of dinosaurs being warm-blooded.

Another argument for the warm-blooded theory has to do with looking at the anatomy of dinosaurs and at the similarities with warm-blooded animals.If you look at what’s around today,well,let’s see,today anything that walks on two legs is warm-blooded.That goes for humans and some other primates,and birds like the ostrich,okay?Only warm-blooded creatures,you know,like ostriches,have upright posture.

Alright,so proponents of the idea that dinosaurs were warm-blooded say,well,look at dinosaurs,some of them had upright posture too.Coincidence?They say no,these two-legged dinosaurs were warm-blooded too.Okay,but on the other hand,as far as we can tell,dinosaurs lacked a body structure called the respiratory turbinate.Why is that significant?

Respiratory turbinate are these complicated structures inside the nasal cavity.They are aligned with soft tissue and their function is that as the air passes through these complicated kinds of curlicue passages,air coming in is warmed up,so that warm-blooded creature isn’t shocked by..Its lungs aren’t shocked by receiving cold air directly from the outside,which would really disturb its internal temperature.So unless there are some other mechanism that we don’t know about,it seems that these,that dinosaurs lacked this vital feature of all existing warm-blooded animals.

二、Whether dinosaurs are warm blooded animals托福听力中文翻译：

在生物课上听讲座的一部分。

教授：直到大约30年前，科学界一直一致认为恐龙是冷血动物，而不像哺乳动物和鸟类那样是温血动物。这些术语“冷血”和“温血”是什么意思？

它们是不精确的术语，有点不准确，但为了一致性，我将继续使用它们。

温血动物，或者从技术上讲，吸热动物，是利用自身代谢来维持相对较高、通常恒定体温的动物。它们自己产生热量，而冷血动物，呃，技术上称为吸热动物，冷血动物主要依靠环境来调节体温。它们的体温实际上可以根据周围的温度变化很大。

正如我所说，哺乳动物和鸟类都是温血动物，我们是哺乳动物，你很熟悉，你知道，你的身体一直保持几乎相同的温度，而如果你见过，比如说，蛇或蜥蜴，你知道的，在岩石上晒太阳，你可以看到一种冷血生物的特征，它利用环境来帮助调节体温。

正如我所说，直到大约30年前，恐龙才被认为是冷血动物，因为它们看起来最像爬行动物。大约30年前，一些科学家开始提出恐龙可能是温血动物。出于各种原因，这非常令人兴奋。温血动物离我们更近。他们更活跃。它们移动得更快。它们可以生活在比冷血动物更广泛的环境中。所以很多科学家都加入了这种温血恐龙的行列。但不幸的是，很多恐龙可能是温血动物的证据都是间接的。证据之一是恐龙化石表明某些种类的恐龙有羽毛。

现在，鸟类的羽毛，除了帮助某些鸟类飞行外，它们的主要功能之一是它们是绝缘体。它们保存体温，因此，通过类比，一些人认为，好吧，如果它们是有羽毛的恐龙，也许它们有羽毛来隔热。是的，也许吧。但也许不是。

另一个间接证据是，在今天属于北极气候的纬度地区发现了一些恐龙遗骸，事实上，恐龙生活在那里时，那里的气候可能非常寒冷。在北极气候中，很难像冷血动物一样发挥作用。不幸的是，我们没有确切的气候信息。只是有人认为这些地区可能和今天一样冷。所以再说一遍，这不是，你知道的，支持恐龙是温血动物的论点。

温血动物理论的另一个论点与恐龙的解剖结构以及与温血动物的相似性有关。如果你看看今天的情况，让我们看看，今天任何用两条腿行走的动物都是温血动物。这适用于人类和其他灵长类动物，还有鸵鸟之类的鸟类，好吗？你知道，只有温血动物，像鸵鸟一样，有直立的姿势。

好吧，恐龙是温血动物的支持者说，看看恐龙，有些恐龙也有直立的姿势。巧合他们说不，这两条腿的恐龙也是温血的。好的，但另一方面，据我们所知，恐龙缺乏一种叫做呼吸鼻甲的身体结构。为什么这么重要？

呼吸鼻甲是鼻腔内的复杂结构。它们与软组织对齐，它们的功能是当空气通过这些复杂的卷曲通道时，进入的空气被加热，这样温血动物就不会因为直接从外部接收冷空气而感到震惊，而冷空气会真正干扰其内部温度。因此，除非有我们不知道的其他机制，恐龙似乎缺乏所有现存温血动物的这一重要特征。

三、Whether dinosaurs are warm blooded animals托福听力问题：

Q1:What is the main purpose of the lecture?

A.To explain the differences between dinosaurs and modern-day animals

B.To present evidence for a theory that dinosaurs were warm-blooded

C.To describe the body structures of recently discovered dinosaurs

D.To compare the fossils of warm-and cold-blooded dinosaurs

Q2:There is evidence that some dinosaurs had feathers.According to the professor,why does this support the theory that dinosaurs were warm-blooded?

A.Feathers prevented dinosaurs’body heat from escaping.

B.Feathers show that dinosaurs were capable of flight.

C.Dinosaurs and birds descended from the same evolutionary ancestor.

D.Dinosaurs used feathers to absorb heat from the sun’s rays.

Q3:What does the professor imply about regions that now have arctic climates?

A.They can probably support both warm-and cold-blooded modern animals.

B.They might have been warmer in the past than they are now.

C.They are areas in which dinosaurs were never able to live.

D.They are good sources of fossils of feathered dinosaurs.

Q4:Why does the professor mention ostriches?

A.To point out that not all birds are able to fly

B.To cite evidence that dinosaurs were cold-blooded

C.To show that not all birds have respiratory turbinates

D.To give an example of an animal with upright posture

Q5:What is the professor's opinion of the theory that dinosaurs were warm-blooded?

A.It has changed our understanding of the term“warm-blooded.”

B.Thirty years ago it was not convincing,but today most evidence supports it.

C.It needs more evidence in order to be convincing.

D.Most of the evidence we have supports a different theory.

Q6:What does the professor imply when she says this:

A.Warming up air may not be as important a function as many scientists believe.

B.Cold-blooded animals may use a different mechanism from warm-blooded animals.

C.It is possible that dinosaurs had another way to warm up air they breathed.

D.Warm-blooded dinosaurs were probably very different from warm-blooded animals today.

四、Whether dinosaurs are warm blooded animals托福听力答案：

A1:正确答案：B

A2:正确答案：A

A3:正确答案：B

A4:正确答案：D

A5:正确答案：C

A6:正确答案：C