植物和河流的二重奏，演绎了一段今天九曲十八弯的河道，令贫瘠之地貌郁郁葱葱；今天的科学小品告诉你！诙谐的语言，生动的内容，一分钟快速掌握科技最新动态。
What was around the bend in rivers hundreds of millions of years ago? It’s a trick question—because there weren’t any bends. Ancient rivers were typically just wide, sheet-like flows of water. New reports in the journals Geology and Earth-Science Reviews say we can thank the very first land-lubbing plants for putting the turn in the river. Researchers from Dalhousie University examined dozens of sites, from the Channel Islands off France to Death Valley. They say that well before dinosaurs or, really, much of anything roamed the earth, rivers were just vast expanses of water heeding only gravity and heading straight to sea. The first vascular plants took advantage of the abundant water, and put down roots. The roots began to hold sediment in place. Thus the riverbank was born and waterways began to get thinner and more defined. The communities of Paleozoic plants congregated at the water’s edge and began to colonize the earth’s surface. Over the next 50 million years this co-evolution of flora and flow led to the meandering rivers we know today, and a barren landscape made lush. And, also, the seven dollar toll to cross the Hudson on the George Washington Bridge.
几亿年前，河湾周围会有些什么呢？这是个很狡猾的问题—因为那时并不存在什么河湾，远古时代的江河里都是一马平川似的流水。《地质与地球科学评论》杂志中最新的报道称：我们要感谢最早期的固定水土的植物根系，正是它们造就了今天的河湾。 从远离法国的海峡群岛到死亡之谷，达荷西大学的研究人员勘察了几十个地方，他们称：远在恐龙出现或确切地说，在地球上出现可以走动的生物之前，江河中大量的水仅受重力的影响并径直流入海中。 首批出现的维管植物利用了这丰富的水资源，扎根于此，而后，河中沉淀物就开始沉积在维管植物根部，由此产生了河堤，水路也开始变得愈发狭窄，水流方向更加明确。不断聚集在水边的古生代植物群开始侵占地球表面。 其后的5000万年中，植物群体和水流的共同演变开创了今天九曲十八弯的河道，令贫瘠之地貌郁郁葱葱，当然，为此，我们还要付出7美元的过桥费，以通过哈德逊河上的乔治华盛顿大桥。