| Legendary explorers Christopher Columbus, Henry Hudson and John Smith all recorded sightings of mermaids. Sea monsters populated the old ships' logs, too. | 哥倫布、亨利哈德遜和約翰史密斯等傳奇性的探險家都曾記載目擊過美人魚。舊時的航海日誌中，也充斥著有關海洋怪獸的紀錄。 |  |
| "The eye sees a fragment and the mind fills in the rest," explains a placard near the entrance to "Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns and Mermaids," a recent exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. These creatures "give shape to humankind's greatest hopes, most terrifying fears and most passionate dreams." | 紐約市的美國自然歷史博物館最近舉辦了一場名為「神秘生物：龍、獨角獸和美人魚」的展覽，展區入口處擺放著一座寫著「眼所不及，以頭腦補足」的告示牌。這些生物「形成了人類最遠大的希望、最駭人的恐懼、以及最熱情的夢想。」 | |
| The exhibit pulls together drawings, maps and other renderings of mythological beings both famous (the Loch Ness monster) and obscure (hippocampi, bunyips and the Ziz). Much of the display is dedicated to scientific speculation on which living or extinct animals might have inspired these legendary birds, beasts, fish or combinations thereof. | 這項展覽集結了著名的（尼斯湖水怪）以及形象難解的（馬頭海怪、本耶普與席茲）神秘生物圖畫、地圖和其他記載的展示品。多數展示品都試著為這些傳說中的鳥類、野獸、魚類或是結合上述各種生物特徵的怪物提供科學性的看法，說明牠們的形象可能來自哪些現存或已滅絕的生物。 | |
| "A lot of these beliefs exist because of fossils and what people originally thought they were," paleontologist Mark Norell, a cocurator of the exhibit, pointed out. Ancient people knew that these were not the bones and footprints of ordinary animals, he clarified — so they must have been from mythical or exotic creatures, or so they thought. | 共同策劃這項展覽的古生物學家馬克諾瑞爾指出：「人們對許多神秘生物的認知，都是來自過去原先認為化石是什麼的想法。」他澄清表示，古人知道這些並非尋常動物的骨骼和腳印，因此他們認為這些遺跡絕對是某種神祕或奇異生物所留下的。 | |
| A central Asian dinosaur called protoceratops, for example, "bears an eerie resemblance to the head of a griffin." A folklorist named Adrienne Mayor first drew the connection between the plant-eating beaked dinosaur and the mythical creature with a lion's body and the head of an eagle. | 譬如說，一種叫做原角龍的中亞恐龍，「和獅鷲的頭部相似得令人發毛。」一位名為安德里安梅爾的民俗學者最先描繪出這種草食性尖嘴恐龍與獅身鷹頭神秘生物之間的關聯。 | |
| For many years before modern paleontologists started digging up protoceratops fossils, central Asia was traversed by Scythian nomads who would almost certainly have noticed them, according to Norell, who noted how "the skulls were common and stuck up out of the ground." | 據諾瑞爾指出，在現代考古學家開始挖堀原角龍化石許多年前，往來中亞的賽西亞游牧民族肯定早就發現了牠們的存在，因為「牠們的頭骨十分常見，而且會從地面突起。」 |
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