媒体英语

Species on Earth 地球可能有8百70万物种

By Paddy Clark, BBC News

the red panda is an endangered species

Scientists warn that human activity may threaten the survival of some species

媒体英语会带大家一起学习 BBC 撰稿人在报道世界大事时常用到的单词和短语。

Background: 科学家们研究出一项新的方式来估计在地球上生物的总数,据统计一共有8百70万种不同类型的生物。这同过去使用的评估方式得到的结果差距很大。科学家们的发现将在网络科研期刊《生物科学公共图书馆》上发表。

收听与下载

It's generally accepted that very many species have yet to be discovered, but until now nobody has devised a reliable way to find out just how many. Suggestions for total numbers have ranged from 3 million to a hundred million, but most of these have been no more than intelligent guesses.

Scientists from the Census of Marine Life devised a counting method by identifying numerical patterns linking data on known species. They reckon that there should be about 8.7 million types of living organisms, three-quarters of them animals and the rest plants.

However, since the introduction of the current classification system by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, only a million and a quarter have been catalogued.

The scientists warn that human activity is hastening extinctions, and they note a touch wistfully, that many of the hitherto unknown species may vanish before we even know of their existence.

Glossary 词汇表 (收听发音, 请单击英语单词)


教育频道意见反馈留言板 电话:010-82628888-5178 欢迎批评指正

新浪简介 | About Sina | 广告服务 | 联系我们 | 招聘信息 | 网站律师 | SINA English | 会员注册 | 产品答疑

Copyright © 1996 - 2011 SINA Corporation, All Rights Reserved

新浪公司 版权所有