肯特·哈普斯表示，自幼年时代起，他就梦想着能发现一块化石骨骼。然而，他却意外寻获了某种更为罕见的东西。
Kent Hups says he’s dreamed of discovering a bone ever since he was a little boy. Instead, he found something much, much rarer.
哈普斯是科罗拉多州诺斯格伦高中的科学教师。2025年，他在北达科他州的荒原地带探险时，在岩石中偶然发现了一连串巨大的脚印。
Hups, a science teacher at Northglenn High School in Colorado, was exploring the badlands of North Dakota in 2025 when he stumbled upon a series of massive footprints in the rocks.
这些脚印如今被认为是首个已知的成年霸王龙足迹化石，其发现有望为这种标志性恐龙在6650多万年前如何在地球上移动提供新的见解。
Those footprints are now believed to be the first known trackway of an adult T. Rex, and their discovery could shed new light on how the iconic dinos moved around the planet more than 66.5 million years ago.
“这一过程有点像坐过山车，”哈普斯对主持人尼尔·克克萨尔说，“简直令人难以置信。这是梦想成真。”哈普斯是确认这一发现的研究论文的合著者，该论文于9月发表在《脊椎动物古生物学杂志》上。
"It's kind of been a roller-coaster ride," Hups told host Nil Kӧksal. "It's been unbelievable. It's a dream come true." Hups is co-author of a study confirming the findings that was published in September in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
上周，他在丹佛自然与科学博物馆出席了这些经发掘出土的脚印的揭幕仪式。为什么足迹化石如此难寻？
Last week, he was on hand for the unveiling of the excavated prints at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Why are trackways so hard to find?
未参与该研究的恐龙古生物学家乔丹·马隆表示，虽然霸王龙化石相当常见，但它们的足迹却异常罕见。
Dinosaur paleobiologist Jordan Mallon, who was not involved in the research, says that while T. Rex fossils are pretty common, their tracks are strangely rare.
他说，此前曾有过零星的单个孤立脚印发现，也发现过霸王龙科其他成员的足迹化石。
There have been a handful of discoveries of single, isolated footprints, he says, as well as some trackways from other members of the Tyrannosaurid family.
“但这是首个真正的霸王龙足迹化石，这非常酷，”在渥太华加拿大自然博物馆任职的研究科学家马隆说。
"But this is the first genuine T. Rex trackway, which is pretty cool," Mallon, a research scientist at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, said.
至于为何如此罕见，他说目前尚不清楚。可能是使骨骼形成化石的环境条件不利于足迹的保存。也可能仅仅是因为挖掘骨骼的古生物学家没有足够留意脚下的事物。
Why they're so rare, he says, is unclear. It could be that the environmental conditions that fossilize bones don't lend themselves to preserving tracks. Or, it could just be that palaeontologists digging for bones aren't paying close enough to what's right beneath their feet.
“往往有专门寻找足迹的古生物学家，也有专门寻找骨骼的古生物学家，”他说。“我感觉在某些情况下，我们只是在走过时错过了它们。”科学家如何知道这是霸王龙但哈普斯不是这样。他说他立刻就知道自己发现了非同寻常的东西。
"There tend to be palaeontologists that specialize in looking for tracks and palaeontologists that specialize looking for bones," he said. "And I have a feeling that, in some cases, we're just missing them as we walk right by them." How scientists know it was a T. Rex But not Hups. He says he knew right away that he'd found something special.
他在探索地狱溪组——一个可追溯至白垩纪、享誉全球的岩层——时，注意到在一片白灰色中出现了一抹红褐色。
He was exploring Hell Creek Formation, a world-renowned rock formation dating back to the Cretaceous period, when he noticed a splash of reddish-brown colour amid the sea of white and gray.
“首先吸引我的是颜色。接着我看到了三个脚趾，”他说。“那一刻我知道，好吧，我找到一串足迹了。我做这行有一阵子了，所以知道足迹有多罕见，但我从未想过我会真的发现霸王龙足迹。”这条长达七米的足迹序列由四个三趾足印组成，每个足印长近一米。
"The colour is what grabbed my eye at first. And then I saw the three toes," he said. "And that's when I knew, well, I've got a track. And I've been doing it for a while, so I know how rare tracks are, but I never thought I'd ever have a T. Rex track, ever." The seven-metre trackway is made up of four three-toed footprints, each nearly a metre in length.
哈普斯及其合著者根据足印的大小、形状以及与霸王龙化石发现地的临近程度，将这些足印鉴定为属于霸王龙。
Hubbs and his co-authors identified the prints as belonging to a T. Rex based on their size, shape and proximity to T. Rex fossil discoveries. "Are we 100 per cent sure?
“我们有百分之百把握吗？没有，足迹尽头没有一具死霸王龙。但我们确实有这些无可辩驳的东西，”哈普斯说。
No, we don't have a dead T. Rex at the end of the trackway. But we do have these things that really, you can't argue with," Hubbs said.
“大小、步幅、足迹序列的窄度。一切都吻合。而且只能吻合霸王龙，因为那是当时最大的生物。”足迹究竟有什么了不起？
"The size, the stride, the narrowness of the trackway. Everything fits. And it can only fit with the T. Rex because that's the biggest thing that's out there."
马龙表示，从这样的发现中能学到很多仅凭霸王龙化石无法得知的信息，包括动物的体型、移动方式、活动区域，以及它是群居还是独行。
What's so great about footprints anyway? Mallon says there's a lot to learn from a discovery like this that you can't from T. Rex fossils, including the animal's size, how it moved, where it moved and whether it travelled in packs or solo.
“骨骼代表的是一具死尸，而足迹代表的是动物活着时在做什么，”他说。
"Bone really represents a dead animal, but a track represents what an animal was doing while it was alive," he said.
认识“地狱鸡”，一种以果实为食的凶猛小型恐龙 化石研究人员认为狗型大小的掠食者可能捕食更大的暴龙 他特别渴望了解足迹能否描绘出这种生物的速度。
Meet the 'hell chicken,' a feisty little dinosaur who feasted on fruit Fossil researchers believe dog-sized raptor may have fed on larger tyrannosaur He's particularly keen to learn whether the tracks can paint a picture of the creature's speed.
“如今已有研究接连不断，试图模拟霸王龙的生物力学，模拟它们移动的速度，以及它们能否奔跑。其中很多研究都相当高深，运用工程原理和大量数学方程，”他说。
"There have been, you know, study after study now trying to model T. Rex biomechanics and model how quickly they moved [and] could they run or not. And a lot of it's been sort of high-falutin’, you know, engineering principles and lots of mathematical equations," he said.
“但最终，将告诉我们实际发生了什么的，是这些足迹。”到目前为止，研究人员估计留下足迹的动物步幅约为4米，行走速度约为每小时5.5至7.2公里。
"But ultimately it's the tracks that are going to tell us what actually happened." So far, the researchers estimate the animal that made the tracks had a stride of approximately four metres, and was walking about 5.5 to 7.2 kilometres per hour.
据丹佛博物馆介绍，这“大致相当于人类快步行走的速度。” 还有很多有待研究 胡普斯表示，关于这条足迹序列，还有很多有待研究的地方。
According to the Denver Museum, that's "roughly comparable to a brisk human walking pace." More to learn Hups says there's a lot more to learn about the trackway.
在科学家挖掘出这些脚印之前，他们进行了高分辨率三维表面扫描，并进行了数字化复原，以便进一步分析。
Before scientists excavated the prints, they took high-resolution 3D surface scans, and reproduced the track digitally for further analysis.
他表示，研究挖掘出的脚印本身也大有可为。胡普斯希望科学家能从中提取到皮肤样本。
There's also a lot to learn from studying the excavated prints themselves, he said. Hups is hopeful scientists will be able to extract a skin sample from them.
“这就像一份圣诞礼物，”他说，“拆开之前，你永远不知道里面是什么。” 不过，这四个脚印中的一个将留在现场公开展出，直到明年年底。
"It's like a Christmas present," he said. "You don't know what you're gonna get until you open it up." One of the four tracks, however, will remain on public display through the end of next year.
在揭幕仪式上，胡普斯说他向一个睁大眼睛的小女孩展示了这个巨大的脚印，小女孩对这次体验心存感激，甚至拥抱了他。
At the unveiling, Hubs says he got to show the massive footprint to a wide-eyed little girl who was so grateful for the experience that she hugged him.
“你能看到她眼中的惊奇和兴奋，”他说，“这才是终极归宿：让它处在一个人们可以观赏、可供研究、并受到保护的地方。”
"You could see the wonder and the excitement," he said. "That's your ultimate ending is to have that in a place where people can look at it, and it's there for research. It's protected."