听力文本

This is Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
Hundreds of millions of years from now, when humans are probably long gone, what sort of geologic record will we leave behind for future archaeologists? Plastics, sure? Concrete, maybe? How about: (CLIP: chicken ad montage: "The tasty tender chicken.""Great chicken!""Woo! Chicken!")
Yep, chicken. Humanity consumes some 66 billion birds a year. Billion, with a B. The mass of chickens on the Earth is so big... it beats the mass of all other birds combined.
"The numbers are astonishing." Richard Thomas is an archaeologist at the University of Leicester, who writes with his colleagues in the journal Royal Society Open Science that chicken bones could be a unique signifier of our era...known as the 'Anthropocene.'
Thomas says our chicken-industrial complex can be traced back to a program in the late 1940s, called the "Chicken-of-Tomorrow" program.
(CLIP: Chicken-of-Tomorrow archival audio: "Yes, indeed, chickens and eggs are a big business. And like big business there's a serious effort to improve the product. A three-year program to breed a better chicken is now being carried on.")

"They came up with this fast-growing meat chicken." Then, in the decades to come, selective breeding, gene editing, antibiotics and new types of feed and housing helped maximize chickens' weight gain even more. "The chickens of today are something like four times heavier than the original broiler chickens of the 1950s."
The upshot, he says, is these bigger-boned broilers are huge compared to the wild red jungle fowl they're descended from. And modern chickens will stand out in the fossil record, for their size and especially their ubiquity.
"We're gonna find these huge middens, as we'd call them archaeologically, these huge rubbish heaps that are gonna be filled with the fossilized remains of chickens. So they're going to be the overwhelming animal species we find."
And that, folks, may be the foremost legacy that human greatness leaves behind. And all without solving one of the most enduring mysteries of all.
(CLIP: Chicken-of-Tomorrow clip: "After all these years, whether the chicken or the egg came first is still the subject of a lot of good-natured debate.")
Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

参考译文

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学);!zYD%KmKD7U(OH]。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔1-~eEOM_4p|n;&kY。
数亿年之后，在人类可能早已灭绝时，我们能为未来的考古学家留下什么样的地质记录呢？塑料，确定吗？混凝土？有可能.h8JER4Ls]f[。那鸡呢？（音频片段：鸡肉广告剪辑：“美味滑嫩的鸡肉!]XI7idSag;8E-+ZTf。”“超棒的鸡肉！”“哇！鸡肉耶！”）
没错，鸡[mnv-q|nibd3+6ZBb,。人类每年要消耗大约660亿只鸡#9&!gqW07vp%mL9R。单位是十亿zN#SZ;VS3Aadz~;。地球上所存在的鸡的数量非常多，甚至超过了其它所有鸟类的总和MYY+B*.&c%9Y+~k。
“鸡的数量令人万分震惊u5202X@5e+hNT。”莱斯特大学的考古学家理查德·托马斯说到，他和同事在《皇家社会开放科学》期刊上撰文称，鸡骨可能是我们这个被称为“人类世”时代的一个独特标志bl-)evWei),q。
托马斯表示，我们的养鸡业可以追溯至20世纪40年代末一个名为“明日之鸡”的项目]8)kB+mK=1t.enh!。
（音频片段：“明日之鸡”档案音频：“对，没错，鸡和鸡蛋可是大生意w_ir!xXEM=uKl,Cs*X%!。与其他大生意一样，现在也有改善这一产品的有力举措uW1YWe2+|,。一项旨在培育更好鸡种的三年计划正在进行中(hSQPvahqE@MD。”）
“他们想出了这种快速生长的肉鸡品种=q,Z9,a^.(Hd。”在随后的几十年中，选择育种、基因编辑、抗生素以及新型饲料和鸡舍，帮助肉鸡最大限度地增重Ba)@,7AOV^Z+cjVYW|T。“现在的肉鸡，体重大约是20世纪50年代原版肉鸡的4倍-yc_I;_xF7。”
他说，结果是，与其祖先野生红原鸡相比，这些大骨肉鸡相当庞大;gd~ekg#|3I)e。基于体型尤其是普遍性，现代鸡将在化石记录中脱颖而出L_FHMJB1WuJUm;gsld。
“我们会找到这些‘贝冢’——这是考古学的说法——这些巨大的垃圾堆将布满肉鸡的化石残骸z+XTaHQd7Fr)8kvO。这些鸡会成为我们所发现的压倒性动物物种-6*QzxqWuG5QUN7Or~Z。”
各位，这可能是人类伟大文明所留下的最重要遗产w_-_j%.EfNraTe~0L8^。但一个最经久不衰的谜团仍未解决O[NpDU-^ATT&LOZ^yZpO。
（音频片段“明日之鸡”音频：“这么多年来，到底是先有鸡还是先有蛋仍是众多友善争论的话题QY3^FbxM|uh*,。”）
谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学qSBc9a^=WAUH)A*。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔@Eh^pW|Xp+8H~66。

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重点讲解

重点讲解：
1. leave behind 留下；余留；
His wife left behind her two little girls.
他妻子死后留下两个小女孩XGj&R6@tFC[。
2. carry on 举行；进行；开展；
I hope to carry on for an indeterminate period.
我希望能进行一段时期+Y(Vi7GI#Dl0wt。
3. come up with 想出，提出(计划、想法等)；
I don't think he can come up with any clever move.
我看他也没有什么高招dzWkdiE.)J!j6kaAd。
4. stand out 引人注目；显眼；
She's the sort of person who stands out in a crowd.
她是那种在人群中很显眼的人p)8vwQf[_oml=AVSU([。