PTE考生目前最大的问题之一就是练习题缺乏。除了有限的基本官方书（PLUS，Testbuilder, OG）之外,就没有题了。很多英语基础不是很扎实的同学很难找到练习材料。墨尔本文波雅思PTE培训学校专门为墨尔本，悉尼PTE考生准备了适合PTE听力阅读练习的科学60秒。各位PTE同学可以练习PTE听力中的summarise spoken text和PTE口语中的retell lecture，PTE听力口语-科学60秒-Frosty Moss练习记笔记技巧和复述。废话少说，下面开始：
60秒科学：Dino Devastator Also Ravaged Veggies
听力内容：
60秒科学节目（SSS）是科学美国人网站的一套广播栏目，英文名称：Scientific American – 60 Second Science,节目内容以科学报道为主，节目仅一分钟的时间，主要对当今的科学技术新发展作以简明、通俗的介绍，对于科学的发展如何影响人们的生活环境、健康状况及科学技术，提供了大量简明易懂的阐释。
Sixty-six million years ago, the Chicxulub meteorite, a rock over six miles wide, slammed into the Earth. And you know what happened next—the dinos disappeared. But Benjamin Blonder, a plant ecologist at the University of Arizona, says to consider the big picture for a moment.
“You have to think not only about the charismatic animals which are walking on the planet, but also all of the resources on which those animals are depending.” Say, for example, vegetation. Blonder has been giving those overshadowed impact victims their due. After all, more than half the plant species in temperate North America perished along with the dinosaurs.
And the type of plants that thrived after the impact were different as well. Blonder and his colleagues studied thousands of fossil leaves from North Dakota, spanning about a million years both before and after the impact. They measured leaf mass per area, a proxy for how much energy a plant invests in its leaves, and the density of veins, which indicates how fast-growing the leaf is. Sturdy, slow-growing leaves tend to be evergreens, whereas flimsy, fast-growing leaves are a hallmark of deciduous plants.
Turns out that after the impact, the fossil record has more deciduous-looking leaves—suggesting that fast-growing, more adaptable seasonal plants beat out the competition after the big hit. The study appears in the journal PLoS Biology. [Benjamin Blonder et al, Plant Ecological Strategies Shift Across the Cretaceous–Paleogene Boundary]
And it kinda makes me wonder if we haven’t overlooked another theory for why the dinos died out—maybe they just didn’t care for the taste of deciduous leaves?
—Christopher Intagliata
