新托福阅读真题： The Origins of Cetaceans

以下是国内知名辅导机构新托福阅读真题的英文版，对于备考托福考试的考生一定要注意在备考的过程中培养语感，多读一些托福真题文章。

It should be obvious that cetaceans—whales, porpoises, and dolphins-are mammals. They breathe through lungs, not　through gills, and give birth to live young. Their streamlined bodies, the absence of hind legs, and the presence of a　fluke1 and blowhole2 cannot disguise their affinities with land dwelling mammals. However, unlike the cases of sea otters and pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses, whose limbs are functional both on land and at sea), it is not easy to envision what the first whales looked like. Extinct but already fully marine cetaceans are known from the fossil record. How was the gap between a walking mammal and a swimming whale bridged? Missing until recently were fossils clearly intermediate, or transitional, between land mammals and cetaceans. Very exciting discoveries have finally allowed scientists to reconstruct the most likely origins of cetaceans. In 1979, a team looking for fossils in northern Pakistan found what proved to be the oldest fossil whale. The fossil was officially named Pakicetus in honor of the country where the discovery was made. Pakicetus was found embedded in rocks formed from river deposits that were 52 million years old. The river that formed these deposits was actually not far from an ancient ocean known as the Tethys Sea.

The fossil consists of a complete skull of an archaeocyte, an extinct group of ancestors of modern cetaceans. Although limited to a skull, the Pakicetus fossil provides precious details on the origins of cetaceans. The skull is cetacean-like but its jawbones lack the enlarged space that is filled with fat or oil and used for receiving underwater sound in modern whales. Pak icetus probably detec ted sound throug h the ear op ening as in land mam mals. The skull also lacks a　blowhole, another cetacean adaptation for diving. Other features, however, show experts that Pakicetus is a transitional　form between a group of extinct flesh-eating mammals, the mesonychids, and cetaceans. It has been suggested that Pakicetus fed on fish in shallow water and was not yet adapted for life in the open ocean. It probably bred and gave birthon land.

Another major discovery was made in Egypt in 1989. Several skeletons of another early whale, Basilosaurus, were found in sediments left by the Tethys Sea and now exposed in the Sahara desert. This whale lived around 40 million　years ago, 12 million years after Pakicetus. Many incomplete skeletons were found but they included, for the first time in an archaeocyte, a complete hind leg that features a foot with three tiny toes. Suc h legs would have been far　too small to have supported the 50-foot-lon g Bas ilos aurus on land. Basilosaurus was undoubt edly a fully　marine whale with pos sibly nonfunc tional, or ves tigial, hind legs.　An even more exciting find was reported in 1994, also from Pakistan. The now extinct whale Ambulocetus natans ("the walking whale that swam") lived in the Tethys Sea 49 million years ago. It lived around 3 million years after　Pakicetus but 9 million before Basilosaurus. The fossil luckily includes a good portion of the hind legs. The legs were　strong and ended in long feet very much like those of a modern pinniped. The legs were certainly functional both on　land and at sea. The whale retained a tail and lacked a fluke, the major means of locomotion in modern cetaceans. The　structure of the backbone shows, however, that Ambulocetus swam like modern whales by moving the rear portion of　its body up and down, even though a fluke was missing. The large hind legs were used for propulsion in water. On land, where it probably bred and gave birth, Ambulocetus may have moved around very much like a modern sea lion. It was undoubtedly a whale that linked life on land with life at sea.

总之，对于托福考试阅读的准备并非一朝一夕之事，需要同学们付诸行动，提高托福阅读成绩指日可待。