“龟甲是怎样形成的”是个困扰了古生物学家近200年的谜团。最近,中科院古脊椎动物与古人类研究所的李淳等在《自然》杂志发表的论文使这一谜团有了破解的希望。依据在中国贵州省出土的距今2.2亿年的“半甲齿龟”化石,该研究首次证实了龟甲由脊椎和肋骨衍生而来,从而否定了先前龟甲起源于小骨板融合的假说。 How tortoise is formed is a puzzle that has plagued paleontologists for nearly 200 years. Recently, the paper published in Nature by Li Chun et al., Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, made the mystery hopefully cracked. The study, for the first time, confirmed that shell tortoiseshell was derived from the spine and ribs, negating the hypothesis that previous shell formation originated from platelet fusion, based on the 220,000-year-old “half-tortoise” fossils unearthed in Guizhou Province, China.