Academic Reading Sample Task – Sentence Completion
学术阅读示例任务 – 句子填空
[Note: This is an extract from a Part 2 task about the evolution of birds and their ancestry.]
[注：这是关于鸟类及其祖先进化的第二部分任务的摘录。]
The origins of birds
The science of evolutionary relationships has undergone a major change in recent decades. It used to be the case that all the features of organisms were important in working out their family tree.
But following the work of German entomologist Willi Hennig, many evolutionary scientists now believe that the only features which carry any useful information are the evolutionary ‘novelties’ shared between organisms. Mice, lizards and fish, for example, all have backbones – so the feature ‘backbone’ tells us nothing about their evolutionary relationship. But the feature ‘four legs’ is useful because it’s an evolutionary novelty – a characteristic shared only between the lizard and the mouse. This would suggest that the lizard and mouse are more closely related to each other than either is to the fish. This revolutionary approach is called cladistics, and it has been central to the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
The ‘birds are dinosaurs’ theory was first developed by English palaeontologist Thomas Huxley (1825–1895). According to some accounts, one evening Huxley went to dinner still thinking about a mystery dinosaur bone in his lab. He knew he was dealing with the lower leg bone (tibia) of a meat-eating, two-legged dinosaur belonging to the classification known as theropods, but attached to the tibia was an unidentified extra bone. On the menu that evening was quail, a small bird similar to a pheasant, and Huxley noticed the same strange bone, attached to the quail tibia on his plate. He later realised that it was in fact the bird’s anklebone. More importantly, Huxley concluded that its forms in both dinosaur and bird skeletons were so similar that they must be closely related.
Huxley’s idea fell out of favour for fifty years following the 1916 publication of The Origin of Birds by the Danish doctor Gerhard Heilmann. During this time, Heilmann’s theory was widely accepted. Heilmann had noted that two-legged, meat-eating dinosaurs lacked collarbones. In later evolutionary stages these bones fuse together to form the distinctive ‘Y’- shaped bone in a bird’s neck, known as the furcula. Heilmann proposed the notion that such a feature could not be lost and then re-evolve at a later date, so dinosaurs could not be the ancestors of birds.
Then, in the late 1960s, John Ostrom from Yale University in the US, noted 22 features in the skeletons of meat-eating dinosaurs that were also found in birds and nowhere else. This reset the thinking on bird ancestry and once again Huxley’s ideas caught the attention of the scientific community. Subsequent work has found up to 85 characteristics that tie dinosaurs and birds together. But what of Heilmann’s missing bones? It turns out that not only did many dinosaurs have collarbones, these were also fused together into a furcula. Unfortunately for Heilmann, the fossil evidence was somewhat lacking in his day, and the few furculae that had been found were misidentified, usually as belly ribs.
US ornithologist Alan Feduccia and palaeontologist Larry Martin are two vocal opponents of the dinosaur theory. They contend that birds evolved from some unknown reptile at a time long before dinosaurs. Their reasoning is that flight is most likely to have started from a tree-climbing ancestor, yet all the proposed dinosaurian ancestors were ground-dwellers. But the dino-bird supporters contend that an unknown dinosaurian bird-ancestor could have been tree-dwelling, or that birds evolved flight from the ground up by chasing and leaping after insects. Most of Feduccia and Martin’s case against the ‘birds-are-dinosaurs’ hypothesis is based on differences between birds and dinosaurs. Supporters of cladistics, however, maintain that differences between organisms do not matter, as it is the similarities between them that count. Evolution dictates that organisms will change through time, so it is only the features which persist that carry useful information about their origins.
Most people on either side of the debate do accept, however, that the ancient winged creature known as Archaeopteryx is an ancestor of today’s birds. This is in spite of the fact that its form is distinctly non-bird-like, with a long bony tail, and teeth instead of a beak. The ‘birds-are dinosaurs’ supporters contend that, if clearly-preserved feathers had not been found alongside two of the seven Archaeopteryx specimens, it would probably have been identified as a small dinosaur.
However, Archaeopteryx does have some bird-like features, such as a furcula and bird-like feet, that suggest that it is too bird-like to be considered a dinosaur.
Over the last few decades several dinosaurs with bird-like features and primitive birds with dinosaur-like features have been found in several countries, connecting Archaeopteryx back to dinosaurs, and forwards to modern birds. Sinosauropteryx, excavated from 130-million-year-old rocks in northeast China, is one example. It is a dinosaur skeleton surrounded by a halo of fuzz, thought to be primitive feathers. And a reassessment of other dinosaurs reveals such bird-like features as hollow bones and a foot with three functional toes, characteristics that appeared over 50 million years before Archaeopteryx took to the air. And Rahonavis, a primitive bird from Madagascar is more bird-like than Archaeopteryx, yet retains some distinctive dinosaur features, including a long and vicious claw at the end of its wing. Over a century since Huxley’s discovery, it seems that cladistics may have finally settled the ‘dino-bird’ debate.
Questions 1 – 5
Complete the sentences below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
1 Huxley formulated his theory while studying a dinosaur belonging to a group called ………… .
2 Heilmann rejected Huxley’s theory because of the apparent absence of.................in dinosaurs.
3 Feduccia and Martin believe that the ancestor of today’s birds was a kind of early ………… .
4 In cladistics, the ............... between organisms’ characteristics are of major importance.
5 The dangerous................on a primitive bird from Madagascar adds weight to the ‘dino-bird’ argument.
(答案见文末)
资料来源：ITELTS 官网
---------- 中英双语对照 ----------
The origins of birds
鸟类的起源
The science of evolutionary relationships has undergone a major change in recent decades. It used to be the case that all the features of organisms were important in working out their family tree.
近几十年来，进化关系科学 (evolutionary relationships) 发生了重大变化。过去，生物的所有特征对于确定其家谱 (family tree) 都很重要。
But following the work of German entomologist Willi Hennig, many evolutionary scientists now believe that the only features which carry any useful information are the evolutionary ‘novelties’ shared between organisms. Mice, lizards and fish, for example, all have backbones – so the feature ‘backbone’ tells us nothing about their evolutionary relationship. But the feature ‘four legs’ is useful because it’s an evolutionary novelty – a characteristic shared only between the lizard and the mouse. This would suggest that the lizard and mouse are more closely related to each other than either is to the fish. This revolutionary approach is called cladistics, and it has been central to the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
但继德国昆虫学家 (entomologist) 威利·亨尼格 (Willi Hennig) 的研究之后，许多进化科学家 (evolutionary scientists) 现在认为，唯一能提供有用信息的特征是生物之间共有的进化 “新奇之处 (novelties)”。例如，老鼠(mice)、蜥蜴 (lizards) 和鱼都有脊椎 (backbones) ——因此 “脊椎 (backbone)” 这一特征并不能告诉我们它们的进化关系。但“四条腿 (four legs)”这一特征很有用，因为它是一种进化新奇之处 (evolutionary novelty) —— 只有蜥蜴 (lizard) 和老鼠 (mouse) 才有这一特征。这表明蜥蜴 (lizard) 和老鼠 (mouse) 之间的关系比它们与鱼 (fish) 之间的关系更密切。这种革命性的方法被称为分支分类学 (cladistics)，它一直是鸟类由恐龙进化而来这一观点的核心。
The ‘birds are dinosaurs’ theory was first developed by English palaeontologist Thomas Huxley (1825–1895). According to some accounts, one evening Huxley went to dinner still thinking about a mystery dinosaur bone in his lab. He knew he was dealing with the lower leg bone (tibia) of a meat-eating, two-legged dinosaur belonging to the classification known as theropods, but attached to the tibia was an unidentified extra bone. On the menu that evening was quail, a small bird similar to a pheasant, and Huxley noticed the same strange bone, attached to the quail tibia on his plate. He later realised that it was in fact the bird’s anklebone. More importantly, Huxley concluded that its forms in both dinosaur and bird skeletons were so similar that they must be closely related.
“鸟类是恐龙 (birds are dinosaurs)”理论最早是由英国古生物学家 (English palaeontologist) 托马斯·赫胥黎 (Thomas Huxley)（1825-1895）提出的。据一些记载，一天晚上，赫胥黎 (Huxley) 去吃饭时，仍然在思考实验室里一块神秘的恐龙骨头 (dinosaur bone)。他知道他正在处理一种食肉的两足恐龙的小腿骨（胫骨）(lower leg bone (tibia))，这种恐龙属于兽脚类 (theropods)，但胫骨 (tibia) 上却连着一块身份不明的额外骨头 (unidentified extra bone)。那天晚上的菜单上有鹌鹑 (quail)，一种类似于野鸡的小鸟 (a small bird similar to a pheasant)，赫胥黎 (Huxley) 注意到盘子里鹌鹑胫骨上连着一块奇怪的骨头。他后来意识到，这实际上是鸟的踝骨 (anklebone)。更重要的是，赫胥黎 (Huxley) 得出结论，恐龙和鸟类骨骼中的踝骨形态非常相似，因此它们一定是密切相关的。
Huxley’s idea fell out of favour for fifty years following the 1916 publication of The Origin of Birds by the Danish doctor Gerhard Heilmann. During this time, Heilmann’s theory was widely accepted. Heilmann had noted that two-legged, meat-eating dinosaurs lacked collarbones. In later evolutionary stages these bones fuse together to form the distinctive ‘Y’- shaped bone in a bird’s neck, known as the furcula. Heilmann proposed the notion that such a feature could not be lost and then re-evolve at a later date, so dinosaurs could not be the ancestors of birds.
1916 年，丹麦医生格哈德·海尔曼 (Gerhard Heilmann) 出版了《鸟类的起源》 (The Origin of Birds)，此后五十年里赫胥黎 (Huxley) 的观点一直无人问津。而在此期间，海尔曼 (Heilmann) 的理论被广泛接受。海尔曼 (Heilmann) 注意到，两足食肉恐龙没有锁骨 (collarbones)。在后来的进化阶段，这些骨头融合在一起，形成了鸟类颈部独特的 “Y” 形骨头，称为叉骨 (furcula) 。海尔曼 （Heilmann） 提出，这种特征不可能消失以后重新进化，因此恐龙不可能是鸟类的祖先 (ancestors)。
Then, in the late 1960s, John Ostrom from Yale University in the US, noted 22 features in the skeletons of meat-eating dinosaurs that were also found in birds and nowhere else. This reset the thinking on bird ancestry and once again Huxley’s ideas caught the attention of the scientific community. Subsequent work has found up to 85 characteristics that tie dinosaurs and birds together. But what of Heilmann’s missing bones? It turns out that not only did many dinosaurs have collarbones, these were also fused together into a furcula. Unfortunately for Heilmann, the fossil evidence was somewhat lacking in his day, and the few furculae that had been found were misidentified, usually as belly ribs.
在20世纪60年代末 (in the late 1960s)，美国耶鲁大学 (Yale University) 的约翰·奥斯特罗姆 (John Ostrom) 注意到食肉恐龙的骨骼中有 22 种特征也出现在鸟类身上，而其他地方都没有发现这些特征。这改变了关于鸟类祖先的思考方式，再次引起了科学界 (the scientific community) 对赫胥黎 (Huxley) 理论的关注。后续的研究发现了多达85种将恐龙和鸟类联系在一起的特征 (Subsequent work has found up to 85 characteristics that tie dinosaurs and birds together)。那么，赫尔曼 (Huxley) 所提到的缺失的骨头呢？事实证明，许多恐龙不仅有锁骨 (collarbones)，这些锁骨还融合成了叉骨 (furcula)。不幸的是，在赫尔曼 (Heilmann) 的时代，化石证据 (fossil evidence)有所缺乏，那些少量发现的叉骨 (furculae) 通常被误认为是腹肋骨 (belly ribs)。
US ornithologist Alan Feduccia and palaeontologist Larry Martin are two vocal opponents of the dinosaur theory. They contend that birds evolved from some unknown reptile at a time long before dinosaurs. Their reasoning is that flight is most likely to have started from a tree-climbing ancestor, yet all the proposed dinosaurian ancestors were ground-dwellers. But the dino-bird supporters contend that an unknown dinosaurian bird-ancestor could have been tree-dwelling, or that birds evolved flight from the ground up by chasing and leaping after insects. Most of Feduccia and Martin’s case against the ‘birds-are-dinosaurs’ hypothesis is based on differences between birds and dinosaurs. Supporters of cladistics, however, maintain that differences between organisms do not matter, as it is the similarities between them that count. Evolution dictates that organisms will change through time, so it is only the features which persist that carry useful information about their origins.
美国鸟类学家 (ornithologist) 艾伦·费杜西亚 (Alan Feduccia) 和古生物学家 (palaeontologist) 拉里·马丁 (Larry Martin) 是恐龙理论的两个强烈反对者。他们认为，鸟类是在恐龙出现之前很久由某种未知的爬行动物 (unknown reptile) 进化而来的。他们的理由是 (Their reasoning is)，飞行最有可能从树栖祖先 (tree-climbing ancestor) 开始，而所有被提议过的恐龙祖先 (the proposed dinosaurian ancestors) 都是地面栖息者 (ground-dwellers)。但是，恐龙-鸟类支持者 (dino-bird supporters) 认为，一种未知的恐龙鸟类祖先可能是树栖 (tree-dwelling) 的，或者鸟类是通过从地面追逐和跳跃捕捉昆虫而演化出飞行能力的。费杜西亚 (Feduccia) 和马丁 (Martin) 对 “鸟类是恐龙” 假说(‘birds-are-dinosaurs’ hypothesis) 的反对意见主要基于鸟类和恐龙之间的差异。然而，支持支序分类学 (Supporters of cladistics) 的人认为，生物之间的差异并不重要，重要的是它们之间的相似性 (similarities)。进化论表明 (Evolution dictates that)，生物 (organisms) 会随着时间而变化，因此只有那些持久存在的特征 (the features which persist) 才提供关于其起源的有用信息。
Most people on either side of the debate do accept, however, that the ancient winged creature known as Archaeopteryx is an ancestor of today’s birds. This is in spite of the fact that its form is distinctly non-bird-like, with a long bony tail, and teeth instead of a beak. The ‘birds-are dinosaurs’ supporters contend that, if clearly-preserved feathers had not been found alongside two of the seven Archaeopteryx specimens, it would probably have been identified as a small dinosaur.
然而，辩论双方的大多数人都接受古代有翼生物 (ancient winged creature) 始祖鸟 (Archaeopteryx) 是现代鸟类的祖先。尽管始祖鸟的形态明显不像鸟类，因为它有长长的骨尾 (long bony tail) 和牙齿 (teeth) 而不是喙 (beak)。支持“鸟类是恐龙”的一方认为，如果在七具始祖鸟标本 (Archaeopteryx specimens) 中的两具旁没有发现清晰保存的羽毛 (clearly-preserved feathers)，它很可能会被认定为一种小型恐龙 (s small dinosaur)。
However, Archaeopteryx does have some bird-like features, such as a furcula and bird-like feet, that suggest that it is too bird-like to be considered a dinosaur.
然而，始祖鸟 (Archaeopteryx) 确实有一些鸟类的特征 (bird-like features)，比如叉骨（Furcula） 和类似鸟类的脚，这表明它过于像鸟类而不能被认为是恐龙 (it is too bird-like to be considered a dinosaur)。
Over the last few decades several dinosaurs with bird-like features and primitive birds with dinosaur-like features have been found in several countries, connecting Archaeopteryx back to dinosaurs, and forwards to modern birds. Sinosauropteryx, excavated from 130-million-year-old rocks in northeast China, is one example. It is a dinosaur skeleton surrounded by a halo of fuzz, thought to be primitive feathers. And a reassessment of other dinosaurs reveals such bird-like features as hollow bones and a foot with three functional toes, characteristics that appeared over 50 million years before Archaeopteryx took to the air. And Rahonavis, a primitive bird from Madagascar is more bird-like than Archaeopteryx, yet retains some distinctive dinosaur features, including a long and vicious claw at the end of its wing. Over a century since Huxley’s discovery, it seems that cladistics may have finally settled the ‘dino-bird’ debate.
在过去的几十年中，在多个国家发现了几种具有鸟类特征的恐龙和具有恐龙特征的原始鸟类 (primitive birds)，它们将始祖鸟关联回恐龙，并连接到现代鸟类。来自从中国东北地区1.3亿年前岩石中挖掘出来的中华龙鸟 (Sinosauropteryx) 就是一个例子。这是一具被一圈绒毛包围的恐龙骨骼，这些绒毛被认为是原始羽毛 (primitive feathers)。而对其他恐龙的重新评估(reassessment) 揭示了诸如中空骨骼 (hollow feathers) 和三趾功能性脚等鸟类特征，这些特征出现在始祖鸟飞上天空的五千多万年前。来自马达加斯加 (Madagascar) 的原始鸟类拉霍那维斯 (Rahonavis) 比始祖鸟 (Archaeopteryx) 更像鸟，但却保留了一些独特的恐龙特征 (distinctive dinosaur features)，包括翼端的长而凶猛的爪子 (long and vicious claw at the end of its wing)。自赫胥黎 (Huxley) 的发现已有一个多世纪，看来支序分类学 (cladistics) 可能最终解决了 “恐龙-鸟类” 之争。
Questions 1 – 5
问题 1-5
Complete the sentences below.
完成以下句子
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
从文章中为每个答案选择一个单词。
Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
将您的答案写在答题纸上的 1-5 框中。
1 Huxley formulated his theory while studying a dinosaur belonging to a group
called ................. .
1 赫胥黎在研究一种属于.................的恐龙时提出了他的理论。
2 Heilmann rejected Huxley’s theory because of the apparent absence of.................in
dinosaurs.
2 海尔曼拒绝了赫胥黎的理论，因为恐龙身上明显没有.................。
3 Feduccia and Martin believe that the ancestor of today’s birds was a kind of
early................. .
3 Feduccia 和 Martin 认为，当今鸟类的祖先是一种早期的.................。
4 In cladistics, the ............... between organisms’ characteristics are of major
importance.
4 在分类学中，生物体特征之间的...............非常重要。
5 The dangerous................on a primitive bird from Madagascar adds weight to the
‘dino-bird’ argument.
5 马达加斯加原始鸟类的................为‘恐龙鸟’论证增添了分量。
---------- 小编备注 ----------
注：生物有很多词汇，比如 creatures, beings, living things 等, 但本文中，用 organisms 这样的词汇，这个词汇对于小编而言是比较陌生的，所以在此写一些想法，来思考为什么此文会用 organisms 而不是 creatures 等词汇。
“生物” 的英文词汇有多个，每个词汇在不同的语境中有不同的使用场景和含义。以下是几个常见的词汇及其区别：
Organism
定义: 任一种活的生物体，包括植物、动物、细菌、真菌等。
用法: 强调一个单独的生物体，并且常用于科学和生物学研究中。
例句: Bacteria are single-celled organisms.
Living Being
定义: 泛指所有有生命的存在，包括人类、动物、植物等。
用法: 通常在更广泛和通俗的语境中使用，比“organism”更少见于科学文献。
例句: All living beings need water to survive.
Life Form
定义: 泛指任何有生命的形式，常用来讨论生命的多样性和不同的生命形式。
用法: 常用于讨论生物的多样性或者科幻作品中。
例句: Scientists are looking for signs of extraterrestrial life forms.
Creature
定义: 通常指动物，但有时也可以指其他生物体。
用法: 更多用于非正式语境，常带有感情色彩或文学色彩。
例句: The forest is home to many wild creatures.
Being
定义: 泛指有意识的存在，通常指人类或智能生物。
用法: 多用于哲学和文学中，强调存在和意识。
例句: Human beings have the ability to reflect on their own existence.
Biota
定义: 一个特定区域内的所有生物。
用法: 主要用于生态学和生物地理学，强调区域生物多样性。
例句: The Amazon rainforest has one of the richest biotas in the world.
总结
Organism: 强调个体生物，科学和研究常用。
Living Being: 强调有生命的存在，通俗用语。
Life Form: 强调生命的多样性，科幻和讨论多样性时使用。
Creature: 通常指动物，非正式和文学色彩。
Being: 强调有意识的存在，哲学和文学中使用。
Biota: 强调一个区域内的所有生物，生态学用语。
---------- 答案 ----------
1 theropods (兽脚类)
2 collarbones (锁骨)
3 reptile (爬行动物)
4 similarities (相似之处)
5 claw (爪子)
---------- END ----------
