科学美国人60秒:Menu Featured Mammoth but Diners Were Mocked

The Explorers Club in New York City—whose members have included Neil Armstrong, Teddy Roosevelt, and the first men to reach both the North and South poles—has a reputation for serving exotic entrees, like fried tarantula and goats’ eyeballs. In 1951 the dinner menu featured Pacific spider crabs, turtle soup, bison steak and—allegedly scavenged from glacial ice off the coast of Alaska—a mound of mammoth meat. 
纽约市的探险者俱乐部——其成员包括尼尔 • 阿姆斯特朗、 西奥多 • 罗斯福和第一批到达南北两极的人们——他们因提供具有异国情调的主菜而广为人知，如“炒狼蛛”和油炸山羊眼球。1951 年，晚餐菜单的特色菜为太平洋蜘蛛蟹、 海龟汤、 野牛牛排以及据说来自阿拉斯加海岸冰川的猛玛象肉。

One club member who couldn’t make the dinner asked to be sent a doggie bag, which he promptly donated to the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. What was particularly odd—odder than displaying leftovers in a museum—was that the mammoth meat was labeled Megatherium, a giant extinct ground sloth native to South America.
一名俱乐部成员，并不会做晚餐，被要求送打包袋，他及时将这个打包袋捐赠给位于格林威治，康涅狄格州的布鲁斯博物馆。特别奇怪的是——简直比在博物馆中展示剩菜还要奇怪——猛犸象肉被标记为“大地懒属”，一种巨型绝种地懒，原产于南美洲。

So which was it: mammoth or monster sloth? To find out 64 years later, researchers sequenced some mitochondrial DNA they extracted from the preserved prehistoric takeaway. What they found is that the source of the sample was neither mammoth nor sloth. It was actually sea turtle—meat that likely contributed to both the main course and that turtle soup appetizer.That’s the forensic finding served up in the journal PLoS ONE. [Jessica R. Glass et al., Was Frozen Mammoth or Giant Ground Sloth Served for Dinner at The Explorers Club?]
因此，它到底是什么呢？猛犸象还是怪物树懒？64 年后，为找出答案，研究人员对一些线粒体DNA进行排序，这些DNA是他们从保存完好的史前外卖中提取的。他们发现样本的来源既不是猛犸象，也不是树懒。它实际上是海龟——海龟肉可能是用于做主菜和龟汤开胃菜。这是法医的发现，发表在《公共科学图书馆·综合》杂志上。

Of course, a double order of sea turtle might not be as exciting as a mouthful of mammoth or a soupçon of sloth. But it may be easier to swallow.
当然，双份海龟肉可能令人乏味，不像一口猛犸象肉或一丁点树獭肉那样令人振奋。但它可能更容易被接受。

—Karen Hopkin
Karen Hopkin报道。