中高生の時に英語は普通の日本人並の勉強をしましたが、大学では（今はコンピュータとか国際化の点で状況は変わっていると思うが）理系だったので一～二年の教養部の時に受験英語よりかなりレベルの低い英語の授業が週に２時間だけあっただけです。社会人になって輸出入取引及びコンピュータ関係の英語には日常良く接するようになりましたが、特定の範囲の語彙が増えただけで、小説はおろか英字新聞や英語の雑誌もほとんど読んでいませんでした。再び英語を勉強しようと十数年前にReader's Digestを読み始め、今はランダムに英語の原書を読んでいますが、若くない時に覚えた単語は忘れるのが早い。今日取り上げるThe Creatからの単語も見覚えがありますが意味が頭には浮かんできません。
Create a Tree of Life for all species and for major gene ensembles within them, thereby tracing the pathways of past evolutionary histories. Meanwhile, combining this information with paleontology and environmental history, establish definitive principles concerning the origin of biodiversity.
さて "paleontology" はどんな学問でしたっけ。
・Oxford English Dictionary: The branch of science concerned with fossil animals and plants.‘Not only is phylogeny important for understanding paleontology, but paleontology in turn contributes to phylogeny.’
・Vocabulary.com: That five-year-old dinosaur expert who can tell a trilobite from a pterodactyl and tell you which thrived during the Jurassic period? She’s a budding paleontology expert.
Scientific language aims at clarity, and scientists generally speak to each other in Greek and Latin. The commonly used suffix -ology comes from Greek, and it means "the study of." The prefix paleo means "old." So, paleontology is the study of that which is old?really, really old. The word paleontology entered the English language in the nineteenth century, just as scientists were making a systematic effort to analyze fossil records.
ついでに前者の辞書の例文に出てきた "phylogeny" も覚えたい。
・Collins Dictionary: (biology) the sequence of events involved in the evolution of a species, genus, etc
Create a Tree of Life for all species and for major gene ensembles within them, thereby tracing the pathways of past evolutionary histories. Meanwhile, combining this information with paleontology and environmental history, establish definitive principles concerning the origin of biodiversity.
さて "paleontology" はどんな学問でしたっけ。
・Oxford English Dictionary: The branch of science concerned with fossil animals and plants.‘Not only is phylogeny important for understanding paleontology, but paleontology in turn contributes to phylogeny.’
・Vocabulary.com: That five-year-old dinosaur expert who can tell a trilobite from a pterodactyl and tell you which thrived during the Jurassic period? She’s a budding paleontology expert.
Scientific language aims at clarity, and scientists generally speak to each other in Greek and Latin. The commonly used suffix -ology comes from Greek, and it means "the study of." The prefix paleo means "old." So, paleontology is the study of that which is old?really, really old. The word paleontology entered the English language in the nineteenth century, just as scientists were making a systematic effort to analyze fossil records.
ついでに前者の辞書の例文に出てきた "phylogeny" も覚えたい。
・Collins Dictionary: (biology) the sequence of events involved in the evolution of a species, genus, etc
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