PrepTest 148, Section 3, Question 3
Researcher: Dinosaur fossils come in various forms, including(40 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(8 more words not shown)
- ADinosaur tracks are(8 more words not shown)
- BScavengers commonly drag(10 more words not shown)
- CResearchers have found(8 more words not shown)
- DDinosaur fossils other(12 more words not shown)
- EIt takes longer(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Wouldn't the bones still be there?
At first, I could imagine different preservation conditions explaining why footprints and bones aren't usually found together. But that's not the researcher's explanation. The researcher points to scavengers visiting the mud flats for food.
Suppose a dinosaur dies there and a scavenger eats the flesh. If the bones remain on the mud flat, we still have bones in the same place as the tracks. Merely saying that scavengers ate the carcasses leaves a step unexplained: what happened to the bones?
What we’re looking for
To strengthen this explanation, I'd want the scavengers to remove the bones somehow. My first guess is that they ate them too. That would explain why the remains weren't left to fossilize alongside the footprints.
Working the answers
- A
Tracks elsewhere don't explain the lack of bones alongside tracks in mud flats. The researcher offers scavengers as the reason for that separation. Finding another place where tracks occur doesn't tell us what the scavengers did to the remains.
- BCorrect
They carried the carcasses away. That's different from my bone-eating prediction, but it fixes the same problem. Dragging a carcass elsewhere takes its bones away from the mud flat, so those bones won't be left there to fossilize beside the tracks. The scavengers can separate the two kinds of evidence without having to eat every part of the dinosaur.
- C
How many of each kind of fossil researchers have found doesn't explain where they find them. There could be far more tracks than bones while the bones that do exist are commonly found beside tracks. We need support for the explanation of their separation, not a comparison of the total counts.
- D
Other kinds of fossils don't answer the question about these two. Their being common gives us no reason bones and tracks would rarely be found together, much less a reason scavengers would account for that pattern.
- E
Different preservation times could make us ask more questions, but this fact alone doesn't explain why bones fail to fossilize where tracks do. What happens to the bones during the extra time? Could both kinds of remains stay in place long enough? E doesn't tell us, and it doesn't connect the scavengers to the missing bones. B supplies that mechanism directly.
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