語音：英式發音 適合跟讀
語速：150詞/分鍾
關鍵詞：fish， footprints， evolutionary history
Four hundred million years ago fish took their first 1)tentative steps onto dry land. It marked a turning point in the evolution of life on Earth， and here’s the proof. These are footprints of the first fish to have grown feet and walked on land. Look closely and you can see that these are not fins， they’re toes， and the creature didn’t 2)slither or drag itself on its stomach， it walked 3)on all fours. The discovery was made here by scientists sifting through rocks in the 4)Holy Cross Mountains of southeastern Poland. And this is what the creature might have looked like； the ancestor of all large land animals， including us.
The emergence of fish from the sea was one of the key moments that transformed the evolution of life on Earth. Today’s discovery suggests that that might have happened nearly 20 million years earlier than previously thought. So the scientific textbooks will now have to be rewritten.
Scientist： There’s a whole enormous gap of evolutionary history that’s opened up beneath our feet. No one knew it was there. No one suspected it was there. There’s an awful lot out there left to discover about the early history of life on land.
Once the first fish made their way onto the shore， it kick-started a process that scientists believe led to the 5)multitude of species that now 6)populate the earth today.
四億年以前，魚類邁出了爬上陸地的試探性第一步。這是地球生物進化史的轉折點，眼前所看到的就是明證。這些腳印是屬於那些最早長出腳並在陸地上行走的魚類的。仔細看你就會發現這些不是魚鰭，而是腳趾。這些動物並不是拖拽著身體或肚皮貼在陸地上爬行，它們是靠四足行走。科學家們在對波蘭東南部聖十字山脈的岩石進行了篩選研究後得出了以上發現。當時的生物有可能是這個樣子的；這就是所有大型陸地動物——包括我們人類——的祖先。
海洋魚類在陸上出現是地球生物進化史上的重要時刻之一。今天的發現顯示，魚類的出現也許比我們之前知道的要早將近兩千萬年。因此科普教材現在要重寫了。
科學家：如今我們麵前出現了進化史中的一個巨大缺口。之前沒有人知道有這麼一個缺口，也沒有人想過它有可能存在。陸地生命發展史的初始階段，有待我們去解開的謎還有許多許多。
科學家相信，魚類第一次上岸的時候，生命形態就開始向如今地球上的各種生命物種進化了。