万物简史 第103期:势不两立的科学(11)

Aware that his finding would entirely upend whatwas understood about the past, and urged by hisfriend the Reverend William Buckland—he of thegowns and experimental appetite—to proceedwith caution, Mantell devoted three painstakingyears to seeking evidence to support hisconclusions. He sent the tooth to Cuvier in Paris foran opinion, but the great Frenchman dismissed it asbeing from a hippopotamus. (Cuvier later apologizedhandsomely for this uncharacteristic error.)

曼特尔意识到，自己的发现会彻底推翻人们对过去的认识。威廉·巴克兰——那位身穿长袍、爱好试验的学者--也劝他小心行事。因此，曼特尔花了3年时间，努力寻找支持自己的结论的证据。他把牙齿送交巴黎的居维叶，征求他的看法，但那位伟大的法国人轻描淡写地认为，那只不过是河马的牙齿。(居维叶姿态很高，后来为这个不常犯的错误道了歉。)

One day while doing research at the Hunterian Museum in London, Mantell fell intoconversation with a fellow researcher who told him the tooth looked very like those of animalshe had been studying, South American iguanas. A hasty comparison confirmed theresemblance. And so Mantell's creature became Iguanodon, after a basking tropical lizard towhich it was not in any manner related.

有一天，曼特尔在伦敦的亨特博物馆作研究，跟一位同事攀谈起来。那位同事对他说，它看上去很像是他一直在研究的那种动物——南美鬣蜥的牙齿。他们马上进行了比较，确认了它们的相似之处。于是，曼特尔手里的动物以热带一种爱晒太阳的蜥蜴命名，被叫做禽龙。其实，二者之间没有任何关系。