Day 160: A Fish Lizard in Stone
At the Urweltmuseum Hauff, a fossil museum in Holzmaden near Stuttgart, Juna (A) stops in front of a huge fossil with her grandfather Rüdiger (B), a retired geologist.
How to study this lesson 3 steps
- Read the situation under the title. It says who is talking and how they know each other, which decides how politely they speak.
- Read the dialogue line by line with its translation, until every line makes sense. Point at (or tap) a German word to see what it means.
- Spend at least 30 minutes listening to native German, for example from the Resources page. It doesn't matter if you don't understand it yet.
Dialogue
Audio recordings are on the way. For now, each lesson is the dialogue with its English translation.
Keys: E hide English · ← → previous / next day · point at a word to see its meaning
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A
Opa, guck mal, der Fisch da hat ja sogar noch seine Haut! Wie alt ist der denn?
Grandad, look, that fish has even still got its skin! How old is it?
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B
Das ist kein Fisch, sondern ein Fischsaurier, ein längst ausgestorbenes Meeresreptil. Der Schiefer, in dem seine versteinerten Knochen liegen, ist rund 180 Millionen Jahre alt.
That's not a fish, it's an ichthyosaur, a sea reptile that died out long ago. The shale its fossilised bones are lying in is around 180 million years old.
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A
Und woher wisst ihr das so genau? Da stand doch kein Datum drauf!
And how do you lot know that so exactly? It didn't have a date on it!
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B
Aus mehreren Indizien: Manche Gesteinsschichten lassen sich im Labor datieren, und die hier eingeschlossenen Ammoniten gab es nur in einem bestimmten Zeitraum.
From several clues: some layers of rock can be dated in a lab, and the ammonites trapped in this one only existed during a certain period.
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A
Und warum hat der hier einen kleinen Saurier im Bauch? Hat der etwa sein Baby gefressen?
And why has this one got a little one in its tummy? Did it eat its baby or something?
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B
Genau das hat man früher tatsächlich geglaubt, bis Funde wie dieser die Theorie in Frage gestellt haben. Das ist eine Mutter, die bei der Geburt gestorben ist.
That's exactly what people really used to think, until finds like this one called the theory into question. It's a mother who died giving birth.
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A
Also habt ihr euch damals geirrt? Dann könnt ihr euch heute doch auch irren, und der Saurier ist vielleicht nur tausend Jahre alt!
So you lot got it wrong back then? Then you could be wrong now as well, and maybe the ichthyosaur's only a thousand years old!
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B
Irrtümer gehören zur Wissenschaft dazu, das gebe ich zu. Aber zwischen tausend und 180 Millionen Jahren liegt dann doch ein kleiner Unterschied.
Mistakes are part of science, I'll admit that. But there is a slight difference between a thousand years and 180 million.
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A
Na gut. Aber nachher gehen wir noch in den Steinbruch und klopfen selbst, und wenn ich einen eigenen Fischsaurier finde, bekommt der meinen Namen!
Fine. But afterwards we're going to the quarry to dig for fossils ourselves, and if I find an ichthyosaur of my own, it's getting my name!
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