英語聽力：美洲大平原-3

Even the mastodon is buried here, a long dead relative of modern elephants.

This was once a bear, but not like any bear in North America today. Claw marks gouged into the cave wall showed the bear was not killed direct by the fall. It made a desperate attempt to climb back out. It was a short-faced bear, an ice age heavyweight. What else can we tell about it from its bones? Its weight was more than 700 kilos, twice that of a grizzly bear today. Upright, it would’ve stood four meters tall. It was the largest flesh-eating mammal that ever walked the earth.

The Wyoming cave, appropriately christened natural trap, provides a unique window of the Ice Age. During its coldest era, much of North America was covered by huge ice sheets up to two miles thick, but as the continent began to warm, the ice sheets started shrinking.

Corridors began to open up along the coast and through the mountains, letting people migrate south from Alaska for the first time. Before them lay the almost limitless great plains stretching all the way from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River and beyond to Mexico.

Across this area, the shifting ice left deep scars on the land. They carved out thousands of lakes and ponds, and left the tapestry of streams and rivers that drained the plains.

1 gouged

v.鑿( gouge的過去式和過去分詞 );亂要價;(在…中)摳出…;挖出…

參考例句：

The lion's claws had gouged a wound in the horse's side. 獅爪在馬身一側(cè)抓了一道深口。

The lovers gouged out their names on the tree. 情人們把他們的名字刻在樹上。 來自《現(xiàn)代英漢綜合大詞典》

2 grizzly

adj.略為灰色的，呈灰色的;n.灰色大熊

參考例句：

This grizzly liked people.這只灰熊卻喜歡人。

Grizzly bears are not generally social creatures.一般說來，灰熊不是社交型動物。

3 tapestry

n.掛毯，豐富多采的畫面

參考例句：

How about this artistic tapestry and this cloisonne vase?這件藝術(shù)掛毯和這個景泰藍(lán)花瓶怎么樣?

The wall of my living room was hung with a tapestry.我的起居室的墻上掛著一塊壁毯。