Huge bones have been discovered in a place 50 kilometers north of Mexico City where a new airport is being built.
墨西哥城北部50公里的一处在建机场出土了一堆巨型骨骼。
Scientists, who study the past by examining very old objects, are digging up more and more of these bones. These archeologists have found that the bones belong to the mammoth, the most famous mammal of a cold period in Earth's history known as an ice age.
Archeologists have found the bones of 70 mammoths so far. The latest discovery includes two large skulls, as well as rib and leg bones.
截至目前，考古学家发现了70具猛犸象的骨骼。最新发现的这批包括两个巨大的头骨以及肋骨和腿骨。
Ruben Manzanilla is the lead archeologist at the site. Manzanilla said that the place once was part of a shoreline with a lot of mud. Lakes likely formed there at the end of the most recent ice age.
"When an animal this size fell here, it got stuck and couldn't escape," he said.
他说，“这类庞大的动物一旦坠入这里，会被困住并且无法逃生。”
The mammoth bones belonged to a Columbian mammoth, which unlike its relative the woolly mammoth, had little hair. But, it was a powerful creature. Manzanilla believes it weighted about 20,000 kilograms and stood more than 4 meters tall.
Many mammoths likely got stuck in the mud, Manzanilla said. But, he said that evidence at nearby places suggests early human hunters used spears to kill the mammoths. They also may have used traps in the water.
Over 10,000 years ago, central Mexico had many groups, or herds, of mammoths. The bones they left behind led some people to create stories about giants.
一万多年前，墨西哥中部生活着许多猛犸象群。它们留下的骨骼让后人创作出巨人的传说。
Lopez Lujan wrote about some of the stories in the publication Mexican Archeology recently.
洛佩兹·卢汉（Lopez Lujan）在最近出版的《墨西哥考古学》上提及了其中的部分传说。
In 1519, two local kings showed the Spaniard Hernan Cortes what was probably a mammoth leg bone. They told Cortes that the bone came from terrible, tall men. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a soldier and writer at the time of Cortes, wrote about the incident.
