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A: that creatures of the seabed were suffering from dwindling food supplies, possibly a result from increasing
I don't love the “a result from increasing” at the end of the sentence. “A result of” is the correct idiom. But if you don’t feel certain about that idiom… well,
read this article about idioms, maybe. And then look for other stuff.
The more important thing: logically, the first part of the underlined sentence doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The creatures weren’t suffering from “dwindling food supplies.” Sure, they were suffering because the supplies were dwindling, but they weren’t suffering from the supplies themselves. Food supplies don’t make you suffer. Eliminate (A).
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B: that creatures of the seabed were suffering because food supplies were dwindling, possibly as a result of an increase in
Nice, this seems to fix exactly the problems described in (A). Let’s keep (B).
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C: that creatures of the seabed were suffering because of food supplies, which were dwindling possibly as a result of increasing
Same problem as (A): creatures weren’t suffering because of the food supplies. Food supplies are awesome, and don’t cause suffering. :banana:
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D: creatures of the seabed that were suffering from food supplies that were dwindling, possibly resulting from an increase in
We actually need the word “that” at the beginning of the underlined portion in this case. Without it, the sentence says that the study “revealed creatures of the seabed…” – and that makes no sense, unless you think that the study involved peeling away layers of sand from the ocean floor to reveal creatures. We also still have the same meaning issue as in (A) and (C): (D) also seems to be saying that the creatures suffered from food supplies. Eliminate (D).
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E: creatures of the seabed that were suffering because food supplies were dwindling, which possibly resulted from increasing
(E) is easier to eliminate. Sure, there’s the same meaning issue as in (D) (“revealed creatures of the seabed”), but the modifier beginning with “which” can’t logically modify “dwindling.”
So (E) is gone, and (B) is the winner.
But the participle adjective "dwindling" in (A) is correctly modifying food supplies, so why its exactly wrong from (B)?