雅思阅读机经：GeneralTrainingBPterosaurs.docxVIP

雅思阅读机经：GeneralTrainingBPterosaurs 为了帮助大家在备考雅思的时候能够练习到更多的真题材料，下面小编给大家带来雅思阅读机经：General Training B Pterosaurs，望喜欢！ 雅思阅读机经：General Training B Pterosaurs A Pterosaurs stand out as one of natures great success stories. They first appeared during the Triassic period, 215 million years ago, and thrived for 150 million years before becoming extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period. Uncontested in the air, pterosaurs colonized all continents and evolved into a vast array of shapes and sizes. B Until recently, most scientists would not have put pterosaurs in the same class as birds in terms of flying ability. Because pterosaurs were reptiles, generations of researchers imagined that those creatures must have boon cold-blooded, like modern snakes and lizards. This would have made flying awkward, as they would have lacked the endurance to power their muscles for long periods of time. C In the past three decades, however, a number of fossil discoveries have prompted researchers to re-examine their views. The new picture of pterosaurs reveals that they were unlike any modern reptile. From a fossil discovered in Kazakhstan, scientists suspect that pterosaurs had a covering resembling fur. If so, this detail provides evidence of a warm-blooded body that could maintain the kind of effort needed to stay in the air. Indeed, scientists now believe that many pterosaurs were gifted air?borne predators, built to feed while in flight. And, in fact, such controversy has surrounded pterosaurs since the first discovery of one in the early 1700s. D Cosimo Alessandro Collini, the first natural historian to study the fossil and describe it, was unable to classify it. It was not until 1791 that the great French anatomist Georges Cuvier deduced that the animal was in fact a flying reptile, whose fourth finger supported a wing. Ho named the fossil Pterodactylus, combining the Greek words for wing and finger. A few decades later, the name pterosaur, or winged reptile, was adop