Though the Cretaceous asteroid cleared the stage, mammals did not really get going until 10m years later, in the Eocene epoch.

尽管白垩纪时期的小行星灭绝了居统治地位的恐龙，但哺乳动物却一直到1000万年后的始新世才真正兴起繁盛起来。

Let's rewind back to the Eocene, about 45 million years ago.

让我们回到大约 4500 万年前的始新世。

Clearly, Antarctica’s biodiversity took a hit after the Eocene.

显然，南极洲的生物多样性 在始新世之后受到了打击。

Over the course of the Eocene epoch, the climate slowly began to cool.

在始新世时期，气候 开始慢慢变冷。

As the Eocene transitioned to the Oligocene, the climate cooled.

随着始新世过渡到渐新世，气候变冷。

Floristic Region, but their family was clearly much more widespread during the Eocene Epoch.

植物区的地区发现，但它们的科显然 要远得多 在始新世时期广泛存在。

As a result, our world is warming faster than it did back in the Eocene.

结果，我们的世界变暖的速度 比始新世早。

So given its size, it was able to support many different ecosystems in the Eocene.

所以考虑到它的大小，它能够支持 始新世许多不同的生态系统。

Around 34 million years ago, the Eocene-Oligocene Transition  marked the first major period of global cooling and glaciation.

大约 3400 万年前，始新世-渐新世过渡标志着全球变冷和冰川作用的第一个主要时期。

You see the Amazon formed during the Eocene epoch, up to 56 million years ago when the whole world was a lot warmer and wetter.

你可以看到亚马逊河形成于始新世时期，距今约5600万年前，当时的地球要温暖得多，湿润得多。

Or there's the Eocene, more than 34 million years ago, a hothouse time during which the continents drifted into their present configuration.

或者是超过 3400 万年前的始新世，这是一个温室时代，在此期间大陆逐渐变成了现在的形态。

One of these earliest rhino-ancestors was Hyrachyus, a lightly built herbivore from the Eocene epoch that looked kind of like a tapir.

Hyrachyus 是这些最早的犀牛祖先之一，它是一种来自始新世的轻型食草动物， 看起来有点像貘。

So by the time the Eocene Epoch was over, North America no longer had the right habitat for primates.

因此， 当始新世结束时，北美不再有适合灵长类动物的栖息地。

And a big environmental change was also underway in the last half of the Eocene, thanks to the chemistry of mountain-building.

由于造山的化学作用，始新世后半期也发生了巨大的环境变化。

Scientists think beavers originally evolved in North America toward the end of the Eocene Epoch, with the earliest known species scampering around Wyoming 35 million years ago.

科学家认为， 海狸最初是在始新世末期在北美洲进化而来的，已知最早的物种在 3500 万年前在怀俄明州四处奔跑。

For example, during the end of the Eocene in Africa, primates that relied primarily on leaves started to become extinct, but the ones that ate fruit survived.

例如， 在非洲始新世末期，主要以树叶为食的灵长类动物开始灭绝，但以水果为食的灵长类动物得以幸存。

As they report in Nature, the critter, which lived around 55m years ago, in the Eocene epoch, seems to be the most primitive relative of tarsiers, mouse-sized primates which now inhabit the islands of South-East Asia.

这种生活在大约五千五百万年前始新世时期的动物似乎是眼镜猴（这种灵长类动物有老鼠一样的体型，现在居住在东南亚的岛屿上）最原始的亲戚。

Were the beautiful volute and cone shells of the Eocene epoch, and the gracefully sculptured ammonites of the Secondary period, created that man might ages afterwards admire them in his cabinet?

始新世美丽的蜗壳和锥壳， 以及第二时期雕刻精美的菊石， 是为了让人们在以后的岁月里在他的橱柜里欣赏它们而创造的吗？

Filling  ecological niches once occupied by dinosaurs, mammals came to dominate the dry grasslands and  forests of the Eocene and beyond, but no species may have been more threatening than humankind.

哺乳动物填补了曾经被恐龙占据的生态位，并开始主宰始新世及以后的干燥草原和森林，但没有任何物种比人类更具威胁性。

Back at the start of the Eocene Epoch, the world was in the clutches of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, and warm, damp forests covered the land from pole to pole.

早在始新世初期，世界就处于古新世-始新世极热期的控制之下，温暖潮湿的森林覆盖了南北两极的土地。