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Some big discoveries can come from the most unlikely places.
一些重大发现，可能出自最不可能的地方。
Zhu Min walked past these pits every day to fetch water from the well.
朱敏每天都从这些坑凹旁走过，从井里打水。
She liked the primitive touch they add to her restaurant courtyard but never stopped to give them a second thought until last July,
她很喜欢这些坑凹给她的餐厅庭院增添的原始触感，但直到去年7月，她才停下脚步仔细端详这些坑凹，
when a curious customer pointed out there might be something more to them.
因为当时有一位充满好奇心的顾客指出，这可能不是普通的坑凹。
Ou Hongtao is a dino-enthusiast. "It was truly a highlight moment of my life. I was drawn by the beautiful courtyard, and then, I realized the puddles.
欧鸿涛是一位恐龙爱好者。“这真的是我一生中的高光时刻。我先是被这个美丽的庭院所吸引，然后我就注意到了这些水坑。
Each on its own, they were just ordinary holes. But together, they formed a pattern that looked like footprints of a very large cat or dog."
每一个水坑，单看起来就是个很普通的洞。但它们合到一起就形成了一个图案，看起来像一只非常大的猫或狗的脚印。”
Southwest China's Sichuan Basin boasts some of the world's most significant dinosaur fossil discoveries.
位于中国西南部的四川盆地，拥有世界上最重要的恐龙化石发现地。
But the Leshan area has no skeletal record of the prehistoric animal.
但是乐山地区却没有发现这种史前动物的骨骼记录。
Ou couldn't be sure. So he took some photos and reached out to Professor Xing Lida, a well-known paleontologist.
欧鸿涛也不能确定自己的发现。于是他拍了一些照片，并联系了著名古生物学家邢立达教授。
Professor Xing and his team flew from Beijing to Leshan.
邢教授和他的团队随即从北京飞往乐山。
"We cleaned the entire courtyard thoroughly. There was a lot of water in many of the footprints, we had to clean up the water, along with the moss and dirt.
“我们把整个院子彻底打扫了一遍。很多脚印坑里都有大量积水，我们必须先清理掉积水，以及里面的苔藓和泥土。
And then, in certain footprints, you can see the depression left by the toes very clearly.
然后，在某些脚印上，你可以非常清楚地看到脚趾留下的凹陷。
I was 100 percent sure that these were footprints left by dinosaurs."
我当时就百分之百确定这是恐龙留下的脚印。”
Recently, Professor Xing and a team of international scientists published their research findings,
最近，邢教授和一个国际科学家团队发表了他们的研究成果，
validating the footprints as tracks of the sauropod dinosaur -- two youngsters, dating back 100 million years in the Cretaceous period.
证实了这些脚印是蜥脚类恐龙的足迹--两只年轻的、可以追溯到一亿年前的白垩纪时期的恐龙。
Zhu Min has become somewhat of a sauropod expert herself. The protection of these footprints now falls on her shoulders.
朱敏自己现在也算是一位蜥脚类动物专家了。而保护这些脚印的重任就落在了她的肩上。
And the discovery of more on hobbyists like Ou.
此外还有很多像欧鸿涛这样的业余爱好者，他们也有各种发现。
"Popular science is gaining strength in China nowadays, and people are applying this knowledge in everyday life.
“如今，科普教育的力度在中国越来越强大，人们将这些知识应用到了日常生活当中。
In fact, science is everywhere. Maybe a student can see strange things on his way to school and make an important discovery."
其实科学无处不在。也许在上学的路上，一个学生就能看到奇怪的东西，并有重要的发现。”
Bringing more chances to cross paths with ancient lives that roamed the earth way ahead of us.
希望我们能有更多机会与距离我们很遥远的远古生物相遇。
