PrepTest 155, Section 2, Question 7
Thousands of fossils from the long-extinct dire wolf(49 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(7 more words not shown)
- ADire wolf pups(16 more words not shown)
- BIf a dire(27 more words not shown)
- CBefore the dire(18 more words not shown)
- DThe entrapment of(16 more words not shown)
- EFor the dire(15 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe the pups stayed home. But what were the adults doing when they got trapped? We have thousands of dire wolf fossils in the tar pits, and none came from pups younger than six months. That absence fits a story in which adults went hunting while the young pups remained in the den. It doesn't establish the story by itself.
For one thing, perhaps small pups could get out of the tar more easily. They might have accompanied the adults without leaving fossils behind. That's a possible explanation to consider, not a fact about dire wolves.
More basically, we haven't connected these trapped adults with hunting or scavenging at all. If they entered the pits during some other activity, their fossils wouldn't tell us much about who joined hunting trips.
What we’re looking for
The question asks for an assumption the argument needs. I'd look for a connection between the evidence we found and the activity the conclusion describes: these wolves were generally getting trapped while hunting or scavenging. Without that link, why use this collection of fossils to draw a conclusion about hunting parties?
Working the answers
- A
Whether pups would help the hunt is different from whether they went along. They might be useful as a distraction, or they might contribute nothing and still accompany the adults. The author doesn't need to assume they were useless to conclude that they probably stayed behind.
- B
This is one of our objections. If young pups could escape more easily, their absence from the fossils wouldn't show that they hadn't accompanied the adults. That possibility undercuts the inference. The argument doesn't depend on giving the pups this advantage; it needs their absence to tell us something about their behavior.
- C
We don't need to rank dire wolves against mammoths or any other animals trapped in the pits. Whether another species left more fossils doesn't connect the dire wolf evidence with the movements of young pups. The comparison is unrelated to the inference.
- DCorrect
This connects the fossil evidence with the hunting and scavenging trips discussed in the conclusion. The argument treats the trapped wolves as evidence about who joined those activities, so it relies on those activities being the usual setting for entrapment. Otherwise, the absence of pups could concern a different kind of outing entirely.
- E
A favorite location is more than the argument needs. An animal only has to visit a tar pit once to become trapped there; it doesn't have to prefer the place or return regularly. The relevant connection is what the wolves were doing when trapped, not how much they liked hunting there.
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