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全球變暖將使人類變矮
Global warming could make humans shorter, warn scientists who claim to have found evidence that it caused the world's first horses to shrunk nearly 50 million years ago.
In fact, a team from the universities of Florida and Nebraska says it has found a link between the Earth heating up and the size of mammals -- horses, in this case, the last time the world heated up.
The scientists used fossils to follow the evolution of horses from their earliest appearance 56 million years ago.
As temperatures went up their size went down, and vice versa; at one point they were as small as a house cat, said Dr Jonathan Bloch, curator of the Florida Museum of Natural History, was quoted by the "Daily Mail" as saying.
The scientists say that the current warming could have the same effect on mammals -- and could even make humans smaller.
"Horses started out small, about the size of a small dog like a miniature schnauzer. What's surprising is that after they first appeared, they then became even smaller and then dramatically increased in size, and that exactly corresponds to the global warming event, followed by cooling.
"It had been known that mammals were small during that time and that it was warm, but we hadn't understood that temperature specifically was driving the evolution of body size," Dr Bloch said in the "Science" journal.
科學(xué)家警告說(shuō)，全球變暖可能會(huì)使人類變矮。科學(xué)家宣稱已經(jīng)找到證據(jù)：近5000萬(wàn)年前全球變暖就曾讓世界上最早的馬個(gè)頭變小。
事實(shí)上，來(lái)自佛羅里達(dá)州和內(nèi)布拉斯加州的大學(xué)的一支研究團(tuán)隊(duì)稱，他們已經(jīng)找到地球變暖和哺乳動(dòng)物個(gè)頭之間的聯(lián)系。這一案例中馬變矮的現(xiàn)象是上一次全球變暖時(shí)發(fā)生的。
科學(xué)家用化石來(lái)追溯馬從5600萬(wàn)年前誕生至今的進(jìn)化歷程。
隨著氣溫的上升，馬的個(gè)頭變小，反之馬的個(gè)頭就變大�！睹咳锗]報(bào)》援引佛羅里達(dá)自然歷史博物館館長(zhǎng)喬納森布洛赫博士的話說(shuō)，它們?cè)欢认窦邑埬敲葱 ?/p>
科學(xué)家稱，當(dāng)前的全球變暖可能也會(huì)對(duì)哺乳動(dòng)物產(chǎn)生同樣的影響，甚至可能會(huì)讓人類的個(gè)子也變小。
布洛赫博士在《科學(xué)》雜志中寫道：“馬最初的個(gè)頭很小，和一只小狗的個(gè)頭差不多，大約也就像一只迷你型雪納瑞犬那么大。令人驚訝的是，在馬誕生后過(guò)了一段時(shí)間，它們的個(gè)子變得更小，之后個(gè)頭又顯著變大，而這些變化與全球變暖和變冷正好是相對(duì)應(yīng)的。
“我們已經(jīng)知道哺乳動(dòng)物在那個(gè)時(shí)期個(gè)頭較小，而那個(gè)時(shí)期氣候也較暖，但我們還未意識(shí)到正是溫度驅(qū)動(dòng)著身體大小的進(jìn)化。”
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