流利说英语level4_英语流利说-核心课-Level4-Unit2-Part1原文

Extinction

Events1原文

The Earth was formed about 4.6 billion yeas ago.

The first life appeared about a billion yeas later.

The first plants didn’t appear until around 2 billion years

ago.

Until about 580 million years ago, life forms were small and

microscopic.

Since that time, life has evolved into many different types or

species.

However, scientist estimated that more than 99% of them are

now extinct.

There have been several extinction events in the history of

the Earth.

In an extinction event many life forms or species of life die

out.

The causes of mass extinction events are unsolved

mysteries.

These events are not predictable and can happen at any

time.

Scientist think that some of them were started by asteroid

impacts or volcano eruptions.

Events of these can change the global conditions that life

depends on.

One major extinction event happened about 66 millions years

ago.

That event may have been started by a large asteroid that hit

the Earth.

As a result, the dinosaurs and about a half of all species on

the planet died out.

When the asteroid hit the Earth, it started

a chain of events.

A chain of events is a series of events

linked together, like a chain.

This particular chain of events happened over a period of

month and years.

When the asteroid hit the Earth it caused a huge cloud of

dust to enter the

atmosphere.

This cloud of dust blocked the sun and

darkened the Earth for many months.

Without the enough sunlight, plants and plant-eating animals

quickly died.

With the death of so many plants and plant-eating animals, the

food chain were collapsed.

This lead to death some more spices.

Mass extinction events have played an important part of in the

evolution of life.

In fact, some extinction events have helped

to accelerate evolution.

For example, some mammals lived through the age of the

dinosaurs, but they couldn’t compete.

When the dinosaurs were removed, the mammals were able to

compete more successfully.

Once they could compete, mammals evolved to a higher

state.

Without extinction events, perhaps we

wouldn’t be here today.