PrepTest 139, Section 3, Question 25
Calvaria major is a rare but once-abundant tree(473 more words not shown)
The passage indicates which one(11 more words not shown)
- AThinning through abrasion(9 more words not shown)
- BIn Temple's experiment,(19 more words not shown)
- CTemple was mistaken(21 more words not shown)
- DAbrasion of Calvaria(20 more words not shown)
- ETemple overlooked the(21 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Separate Temple's claim from the later findings. Temple proposed that thick pit walls made abrasion necessary before a seed could germinate. Speke then found that a minority of unabraded seeds germinate anyway. Even a minority is enough to defeat the claim that every seed must first be abraded.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Speke's unabraded seeds provide the counterexamples: they germinate without the thinning Temple regarded as necessary. This does not require claiming that abrasion never helps; it shows that germination can occur without it.
- B
Many pits in the turkey experiment were destroyed. Ten emerged abraded and intact, and only three of those sprouted. That directly contradicts the claim that the process always released undamaged seeds.
- C
The challenge is to the necessity of abrasion, not proof that a dodo could not significantly thin a pit wall. Rejecting Temple's dependency claim does not establish that this physical action was impossible.
- D
Nothing compares how commonly animal digestion abraded pits in past centuries with how commonly it happens today. The existence of the proposed dodo mechanism does not provide that frequency history.
- E
This would supply a different source of abrasion, but the author does not say that other environmental forces have taken over the dodo's role. The actual counterevidence is more direct: some seeds germinate without abrasion at all.
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