Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that the el

Hello, lakshya14. Since Australian embryologists (scientists)—or embryologists from any other country, for that matter—do not have trunks, its cannot logically refer to any embryologist (even if one possessed a particularly long nose). The same its can, however, point back to an aquatic animal, and that presents an ambiguity issue. Especially if such an aquatic animal were understood to be the precursor to the elephant, it might be sensible to suggest that it, the forebear, had evolved a snorkel-like proboscis. In any case, without and, we would be looking at an absolute phrase, and the grammatical construct would work fine, even if, for reasons discussed above, the clear expression of vital meaning was a bit off.

I had a good chuckle at the image of an embryologist with an elephantine nose. Speaking to your question, though, I hope that everything makes sense now.

- Andrew

Yes it can. The first 'that clause' on the list is an essential part of the sentence and gives you the topic of discussion. The second that clause gives you further information about that topic.

For example:

He informed me that my sister had arrived in the city and that she had brought her dog along.

Think about how he would have told me:
Your sister has arrived in the city. She has brought her dog along.

The meaning is clear. There is no pronoun ambiguity. 'She' and 'her' refer to 'my sister'.

Similarly here, this is what As are suggesting:
The elephant is descended from an aquatic animal. Its trunk originally evolved as a kind of snorkel.

Meaning is clear.

"... have found evidence to suggest that ... " means that they are suggesting based on this evidence. They have found evidence and based on that they are suggesting. Use of the word "suggest" means they are hypothesising based on evidence.
It does not mean that they looked for evidence to be able to suggest this.
Therefore, use of "to suggest that" is correct in (D) and (E).

Hi Pranjal07,

That structure (comma + and) doesn't always introduce an independent clause. What the OG is trying to say is that there is no subject-verb combination on the right of the and.

1. ... and its trunk originally evolving...

Its trunk is capable of acting as a subject, but evolving is just a present participle (an -ing is never a complete verb on its own). This means that we don't have a subject-verb combination on the right to match the one on the left of the and.

Hi shabuzen102,

Yes, it is.

We should check how appropriate the tenses are (instead of making them the same no matter what else gets compromised in the process).

GMATNinja daagh.

I have a very basic query here. My thought process went this way.

I found evidence to suggest that earth is big.
Meaning:- I already know that the earth is big and was looking for evidence to suggest the same.

I found evidence that suggested that earth is big,
Meaning :- Evidence did the act of suggesting and I may or may not have any opinion about the size of the earth.

Is "evidence to suggest" correct with this line of thinking?

100% agreement with the incomparable daagh here. Neither construction ("to suggest" or "that suggests") gives us a clear indication of what the person/people who found the evidence knew or believed prior to finding the evidence, so I wouldn't use that as a decision point at all (for more on that point, check out this post).

Choice (A) has a parallelism issue, so we can rule it out without worrying about "to suggest" vs "that suggests." And that's pretty typical of the GMAT: you might see a choice between two different constructions, but that's doesn't mean that one is right and the other is wrong. Sometimes, both are acceptable, and you'll want to look for other things.

I hope this helps!

To me, it's as simple as this question: what do I think the GMAT wants me to notice?

"and" is such a common marker for Parallelism. Let's look at the structure of (A):

SUBJECT - VERB - NOUN - THAT - VERB - THAT - NOUN - VERB.... AND.... NOUN (its trunk)
Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolving...

So...let's highlight the other NOUNS that could be parallel with "its trunk":

SUBJECT - VERB - NOUN - THAT - VERB - THAT - NOUN - VERB - THAT - VERB.... AND.... NOUN...
Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolving...

This first option would have the meaning that embryologists found two things: EVIDENCE and ITS TRUNK. That's silly. They didn't find a trunk!

The second option would have the meaning that suggests "the trunk originally evolving". This verb doesn't make sense. We cannot say, "The evidence suggests the elephant IS DESCENDED....and its trunk EVOLVING. These are not parallel verb tenses!! We know that "is descended" is simple present tense. To be parallel, we would need "evolving" to ALSO be present-tense. Perhaps, "is evolving" or "evolves."

Neither of the potential interpretations make logical sense, because "its" clearly refers to "the elephant". We cannot achieve parallelism in (A), either through NOUNS or VERBS, so we know that (A) cannot be correct, because there is no way to reconcile it with the rest of the sentence and make it parallel and have a clear, logical meaning.

Also, if I wanted to use the word "that" to create parallelism, we would need to use the idiom THAT X AND Y, or the idiom THAT X and THAT Y. It doesn't work here.

In (E)... THAT the elephant descended...and THAT its trunk evolved... is nicely parallel. Both have a nice NOUN-VERB structure preceded by the relative pronoun "that" and both use past tense. It also uses the "THAT X...and THAT Y" idiom that is so often correct on the GMAT.

(E) works on every level: grammar, meaning, and style.

Hello, NandishSS. Although (A) and (B) are easy to eliminate on other grounds, it is not the inclusion of evolving alone that seals the deal for either option. Simply put, the former answer joins two items together using and but places a comma before the conjunction, the construct used when joining two independent clauses. There is no second independent clause, however, since evolving is not acting as a verb. Choice (B) is the more interesting of the two, in my eyes, since an its phrase can be used to modify the noun of the main clause. The problem in this particular sentence is that its appears to refer to the aquatic animal just before the comma, rather than to the earlier elephant. Consider the following sentence, though, in which the preposition with could or could not appear at the head of the sentence:

[With] its mainsail flying away in a sudden gust of wind, the ship drifted asea for hours before striking the rocks of the shoreline.

I just wanted to point out that an its + verb-ing construct is not incorrect by default. But here, in the sentence about the elephant, neither answer with such an element works.

I hope that helps shed a little more light on the situation. Thank you for thinking to tag me.

- Andrew

Check out this post - not very satisfying but hopefully helpful! If that doesn't help, let us know.

Great username, btw!

Haha! Indeed, you can use suggests in this way. The study suggests, the evidence suggests, the data suggest(s). The meaning is "leads the reader to think/believe," but it is not as strong as "proves."

However, every single answer choice uses suggest as the verb for what evidence does, just with different conjugations or prepositions. So there's no way to escape this verb in this question.

If I may make a suggestion to you - if you're uncomfortable with this word in this context, I would recommend reading more from high-quality sources. Science News and Science Daily are great free options where I can guarantee you will find this verb used in this sense ... as well as plenty of other good material for GMAT Verbal training (RC as well as SC).

Hi TheUltimateWinner,

This meaning is correct:

Let's try this with another word with the same meaning. Would you be comfortable with "the evidence indicates"? If indicates sounds okay, you could look at suggests as ~indicates, because that is what suggests means in this case ("the evidence suggests" ~ "the evidence indicates").

to be descended from X = to be a blood relative of X
In this context, I would classify descended from as an adjective.

Hi Pranjal07,

Could you link to that post (if you came across that advice on GMAT club)?

I don't think there's anything wrong with what you've been told. I might think about it differently, but the two approaches would most likely lead to the same outcome. I would consider two clauses joined by an and to already be parallel enough. That is, as far as the GMAT is concerned, we probably won't be asked to check whether individual elements within those clauses are similar.

'has descended' has an active meaning and it implies 'to move down' or 'sink in terms of morals.'
She has descended the stairs.
The lawyer has descended to the level of his clients.
etc

The action of going down is performed by the subject.

When talking about ancestry, we use 'is descended' because the action is performed on the subject.

The elephant is descended from an aquatic animal.
The elephant did not do the descending on its own.

Check out similar usage on other verbs:
The kids have eaten the chocolates. (active)
Chocolates are eaten by kids. (passive)

Yes, present and past tenses can be parallel based on requirement.

That's being pretty rigid about the definition of "to". Sure, "to" can mean "in order to", but it can be used in a ton of other contexts. For example, "Tim wants to eat a burrito" is not the same thing as "Tim wants in order to eat a burrito."

That said, it's good that you're noticing and thinking about those differences But because there are no strict rules governing the definition or usage of "to", you'll want to be pretty conservative with this sort of thing. If you want to consider that a small vote against (E), that's fine, but the issues with other choices (as described throughout the 5 pages of this thread) are more significant factors.

I hope that helps!

Here is the 'is descended/has descended' discussion:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/australian-e ... l#p3175782