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.
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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
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GMATNinja

Can you please provide some clarification on the use of the second "that" and whether it is need to maintain parallelism? I have seen contradictory responses in this thread as well as multiple other threads on this site.

For example: [I] suggest that [he does X] and that [he does Y].

Is the second "that" only necessary when the object is repeated? Thanks!

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

Great username, btw!
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Request Expert Reply:
Hi honorable experts,
MartyTargetTestPrep, GMATNinja, GMATGuruNY, VeritasPrepHailey, BrightOutlookJenn, AjiteshArun
Q:
Can 'evidence' suggest in real life? if not, can we remove choice A by this way?
Appreciating your help!
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Hi TheUltimateWinner

By "in real life", do you mean in the present tense? I'm not quite sure I understand what you're asking.
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BrightOutlookJenn
Thanks for the reply mam..
Choice A says:
Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolving as a kind of snorkel.
In this choice, the 'evidence' is going to suggest blah blah...
You can suggest me as a human-being, but how an 'evidence' suggests.....? The 'evidence' is NOT a human-being!
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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).
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In choice A,B, and C, the 'evidence is going to suggest blah blah...
But, in choice D and E, the 'Australian embryologists is going to suggest blah blah.... So, it seems that 'suggesting by evidence' is not appropriate (at least to me ) I've crossed out choice A,B and C because 'evidence is suggesting there ). Am I wrong in the process of elimination, mam?


Thanks for the nice suggestion. I'll try to follow your suggestion with heart! But, I used the sentence (You can suggest me as a human-being) just to mean that 'people can suggest; human-being can suggest; the teacher can suggest, but how an evidence can suggest?
Hope you get me!
Thanks for your help...
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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").
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that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolving as a kind of snorkel.
I chose A - but I do understand that it is incorrect choice because of the Parallelism issue (Clause, and Noun+Noun Modifier) but


I have eliminated E because I am not comfortable with the pronoun "it" placed after that.

Can someone please explain - Is it possible for the pronoun in the parallel list to refer back to noun in the list before it? Is it the grammatically correct? Just as in the case of two clauses, IC and DC, the pronoun in DC can refer back to the one in IC when connected with conjunctions.

GMATNinja VeritasKarishma @e-GMAT
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I got this correct though I still have a doubt. Can "its" in (A), refer back to to the Australian embryologist (keeping it singular in this) as "its" being the subjecy of the second clause refers to the subject of the first clause. Or because of "that" in (A) in the first clause making it a dependent clause, then "its" will refer back to "elephants", which is the subject if the dependent clause?

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
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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.
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Hi GMATGuruNY VeritasKarishma GMATNinja

Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolving as a kind of snorkel.
(A) that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolving
(B) that has suggested the elephant descended from an aquatic animal, its trunk originally evolving
(C) suggesting that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal with its trunk originally evolved
(D) to suggest that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal and its trunk originally evolved
(E) to suggest that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal and that its trunk originally evolved

I have a question around the usage of is descended from.

If I am right, descended is intransitive and used as an adjective with "is" as the main verb.
Also, is descended cannot be a passive voice verb because descended is intransitive. Therefore is descended is not the verb.

As per my understanding, the passive voice leads to the past participle ed modifier. The ed modifier should be transitive as well.

But then why does the below e.g. feel correct
...elephant, descended from an aquatic animal,...

Does the past participle modifier have to be transitive as well ?
If yes, then in the above e.g. can we call descended an adjective and there is this subtle difference between classifying ed as an adjective or past participle modifier.
Then I am happy to ignore this difference
OR
Is the above e.g. incorrect.

Kindly help with this usage.

to be descended from X = to be a blood relative of X
In this context, I would classify descended from as an adjective.
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Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolving as a kind of snorkel.


(A) that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolving
What does the evidence suggest?
1) Elephant is descended from an aquatic animal
2) its trunk originally evolving as a kind of snorkel.

Evolving is a participial modifier modifying the trunks and is not a verb.
After “and” we need to use a clause- a relative clause will fix the error of parallelism here.

(B) that has suggested the elephant descended from an aquatic animal, its trunk originally evolving
Same as A.
The use of present perfect tense is unnecessary.

(C) suggesting that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal with its trunk originally evolved

The use of past perfect tense is incorrect. We are not talking about an action that happened before the other.

(D) to suggest that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal and its trunk originally evolved
Same as C.

(E) to suggest that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal and that its trunk originally evolved

The use of “that” clearly introduces the relative clauses. “Evolved” functions as a verb and makes the two clauses parallel. Correct.

Vishnupriya
GMAT Verbal SME
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Hi,

can you help me understand the position of 'is descended' in this sentence as a part of speech? also, the question says have found which is past perfect so is it correct to use 'is', a present tense here?

The combination of some form of "to be" plus the past participle of a verb creates a passive verb construction.

Here's an example: "My leftovers are stolen out of the fridge every night by my hungry spouse." The verb in this sentence is "are stolen."

Similarly, in the clause "the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal," the verb is "is descended."

In addition, "have found" is the present perfect, not the past perfect. The past perfect will always have the word "had" (for example, "had eaten," "had kicked"). The present perfect, on the other hand, will contain the word "have" or "has" (for example, "has eaten," or "have kicked").

The present perfect tells us that an action started in the past and continued up to the present moment. So, in saying that Australian embryologists "have found evidence..." we know that this discovery began in the past and is now complete.

This can be correctly used with a variety of other tenses. For example, I could say that "I have discovered that my own spouse ate the last croissant." Here, I have discovered something that happened in the past.

Or, I could say that "I have discovered that the local zoo allows visitors to feed the giraffes." Here, I have discovered something that is happening in the present.

In the official example, the embryologists "have found" two things: that the elephant "is descended.." and that "its trunk originally evolved..." One of these things is in the present (the elephant is currently descended), and one is in the past (the trunk evolved in the past). That's totally fine! Those tenses make sense with the intended meaning of the sentence.

For much more on verb tenses, check out this video.

I hope that helps!
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