英语词汇coelacanth的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

coelacanth. For many years no one believed that the coela- canth still existed. This prehistoric link between sea and land creatures (some scientists think that the stumps connecting its fins to its body were the beginning of legs) was thought to have become extinct some 70 million years ago, according to re- searchers who had studied its plentiful fossil remains. After evolving 200 million years before the first dinosaur appeared on Earth and thriving for millions of years, they said, it had died out or evolved into a lizardlike form that crawled ashore. Then in late 1938 a strange fish was netted by a South African trawler off the southeast coast of Africa. Five feet long and weighing 125 pounds, it was steel-blue in color and had large scales and stumpy fins. In the four hours that it lived, the fish snapped its sharp teeth at any hand that came near its gaping jaws. Fishermen had never seen a specimen like it, nor had sci- entists, who named it after the Greek words for “hollow spined.” Obviously some coelacanths hadn’t died or crawled up onto land and still remained in the sea. But it took a full 14 years be- fore a fisherman working in the Indian Ocean hauled in another of the “monsters.” Since then, at least 10 more specimens have been found of the fish that brought animal life to land, perhaps the greatest biological discovery of the 20th century. The story certainly goes to prove that no one really knows what goes on in the great depths of the sea where the coelacanth lives, that despite the intense cold, pressure, and darkness, creatures can survive there—“monsters” perhaps more incredible than “the fish that couldn’t be.” The coelacanth’s scientific name (Yatime- ria Chaluminae Smith) derives from the name of Marjorie Courtney Yatimer, director of the East London Museum in 1938; The Chalumna River in South Africa, where the fish was first discovered; and the name of prominent South African fish biologist Dr. J. L. B. Smith.

词汇	coelacanth
词源	coelacanth. For many years no one believed that the coela- canth still existed. This prehistoric link between sea and land creatures (some scientists think that the stumps connecting its fins to its body were the beginning of legs) was thought to have become extinct some 70 million years ago, according to re- searchers who had studied its plentiful fossil remains. After evolving 200 million years before the first dinosaur appeared on Earth and thriving for millions of years, they said, it had died out or evolved into a lizardlike form that crawled ashore. Then in late 1938 a strange fish was netted by a South African trawler off the southeast coast of Africa. Five feet long and weighing 125 pounds, it was steel-blue in color and had large scales and stumpy fins. In the four hours that it lived, the fish snapped its sharp teeth at any hand that came near its gaping jaws. Fishermen had never seen a specimen like it, nor had sci- entists, who named it after the Greek words for “hollow spined.” Obviously some coelacanths hadn’t died or crawled up onto land and still remained in the sea. But it took a full 14 years be- fore a fisherman working in the Indian Ocean hauled in another of the “monsters.” Since then, at least 10 more specimens have been found of the fish that brought animal life to land, perhaps the greatest biological discovery of the 20th century. The story certainly goes to prove that no one really knows what goes on in the great depths of the sea where the coelacanth lives, that despite the intense cold, pressure, and darkness, creatures can survive there—“monsters” perhaps more incredible than “the fish that couldn’t be.” The coelacanth’s scientific name (Yatime- ria Chaluminae Smith) derives from the name of Marjorie Courtney Yatimer, director of the East London Museum in 1938; The Chalumna River in South Africa, where the fish was first discovered; and the name of prominent South African fish biologist Dr. J. L. B. Smith.
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