According to paleontologists, if it were not for the bolide striking

Hi Daagh,
Can you please elaborate on the conditionals mentioned? What is the rule?

TIA.

But does it not seem that

bolide struck the earth
and released more energy.

It did 2 different actions. and is usually used to combine two independent thoughts. Here, the ideas are related. so chose B.

Thoughts on my reasoning?

what helped me get to the right answer was being able to narrow the answers down to C and Dbc they were the only ones in the stem with the right comparison "x times more energy than [the energy] released by the nuclear bomb..." so it should be "x times more energy than[that] of the nuclear bomb..."

then C made more sense than D at the end "dinosaurs would have lived" so I eliminated D.

C is the winner. took 2 mins though.... trying to get SCs within 90 secs max to save more time for the CR / RC

A) if it were not for the bolide striking the Earth at 40,000 miles per hour and releasing 2 million times more energy compared to the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated, the dinosaurs would live
Towards the end it should be would have lived not would live

B) if it were not for the bolide that struck the Earth at 40,000 miles per hour, releasing 2 million times more energy than the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated, the dinosaurs would have lived
There is a mix of conditional along with flaws in A

C) had it not been for the bolide that struck the Earth at 40,000 miles per hour and released 2 million times more energy than that of the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated, the dinosaurs would have lived
This has the perfect reasoning as all the parallelism about the enrgy and bomb is cleared hence let us hang on to it

D) had it not been for the bolide that struck the Earth at 40,000 miles per hour and released 2 million times more energy than that of the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated, the dinosaurs would live
Similar reasoning as A

E) had the bolide not struck the Earth at 40,000 miles per hour and released 2 million times more energy compared to the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated, the dinosaurs would have lived
The starting of the sentence isn't appropriate it has to be had it not be

Hence IMO C

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