听力文本

Almost all life in every shape and form across the surface of the globe would have died.
地球上各种各样的生物几乎全都遇难。
Here at long last was an explanation that tied up all the loose ends and accounted for all the evidence.
终于有了一种解释能拼凑起所有这些零碎资料，并说明所有的证据。
The cause of the Permian mass extinction may finally have been found.
科学家们或许真的找到了二叠纪生物大灭绝的原因。
It would take nearly 100,000 years for life on earth to begin to recover.
直到10万年以后地球才开始恢复生机。
When it did, a new family of creatures ruled the world.
那时一类新的物种统治了世界。

This was the birth of the age of the dinosaurs,
恐龙时代由此开启，
but geologists have found that one of the strange, half mammal/half reptiles of the Permian world did survive.
但是地质学家们发现二叠纪的一种奇特的半哺乳类半爬行类动物也活了下来。
It was a cow-sized plant eater called lystrosaurus.
它是一种和牛一样大的植食动物，叫做水龙兽。
This strange looking creature is one of the most important animals that ever walked the earth,
这种模样奇怪的动物是地球史上最重要的陆地动物之一，
because lystrosauras was the ancestor of all mammals and so, ultimately, of us.
因为这些水龙兽正是所有哺乳动物的祖先，当然也是我们的祖先。
We're only here today because this odd looking creature somehow clung to life during the mother of all distinctions.
我们今天之所以在世上，就是因为这些长相古怪的家伙顽强地挺过了地球上最惨烈的一场生物大灭绝。

视频及简介

如今，我们的世界生机盎然，随处可见活着的生灵。那么请想象一下所有这些生命有95%在一瞬间遭到了毁灭。这不是虚构的故事，它确实发生过。就在3亿年前的二迭纪，地球上还是一片丰饶繁荣的景象，然而2亿5千万年前的一场神秘事件导致了95%的物种灭绝，称为二迭纪生物大灭绝。这个凶残的杀手究竟是谁？是剧烈的地质运动、气候灾变，还是来自外太空的天体碰撞？为此，科学家们展开了一系列调查，试图解开“地球劫难日”惨剧背后的真相。