PrepTest 156, Section 1, Question 27
Discovered in 1993, the site known as Ukhaa(459 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(23 more words not shown)
- AScientists have never(12 more words not shown)
- BThe area of(16 more words not shown)
- CIn areas of(25 more words not shown)
- DGeologists believe that(14 more words not shown)
- EThere are several(15 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
What makes sandslides the favored explanation? All the skeletal fossils are in the third sandstone, and that deposit has the sort of structure a rain-triggered debris flow can produce. The argument moves from the deposit we observe to the event that probably created it.
What we’re looking for
We could weaken that connection by showing that the same deposit can arise another way. We could also challenge the conditions needed for a slide—but they would have to be the conditions at the time of these deaths, roughly 65 million years ago.
Working the answers
- A
Not directly observing an animal die in a sandslide doesn't show that it never happened. These are ancient deaths being reconstructed from geological evidence, not events the scientists could have watched firsthand.
- B
The area isn't stable now, but the conclusion concerns what it was like when the animals died. The modern landscape doesn't by itself rule out stable, vegetated dunes in the ancient past.
- C
This shows that pristine fossils elsewhere occur in a different type of sandstone. It doesn't challenge the explanation for the skeletons at Ukhaa Tolgod, all of which are in the third type. The author doesn't claim that every well-preserved fossil everywhere must result from a sandslide.
- D
Five million years is a long time, but these fossils are from roughly 65 million years ago. The absence of more recent slides leaves the relevant ancient period unaddressed.
- ECorrect
If several natural processes can produce the third sandstone, its structure points less specifically to a sandslide. Finding the skeletons in that deposit would no longer distinguish slides from the other processes as strongly. This doesn't prove that a slide didn't occur; it weakens the evidence for selecting that cause.
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