Descendent of elephant is universal so Option A and E. Option A second part has dependent clause separated by comma which wrong, Secondly suggested is copared with its in option A,Thirdly evolving is used instead of evoloved.

In C and D past perfect tense is used which is wrong as Elephant is still descended from an aquatic animal. Gone
A and B no need of , between descended from an aquatic animal and its trunk originally evolving. Gone
In E both above errors are resolved therefore E

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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!

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.

Meaning: Evidence suggests that the elephant originates from an aquatic animal, and that its trunk originally evolved as a snorkel

(A) that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolving nobody on this Earth uses "that suggests that". Also, "its trunk originally evolving" is an incomplete sentence

(B) that has suggested the elephant descended from an aquatic animal, its trunk originally evolving No reason to use present perfect in the sentence

(C) suggesting that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal with its trunk originally evolved past perfect, so the thing was correct in the past but not now??? --> make no sense

(D) to suggest that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal and its trunk originally evolved past perfect, so the thing was correct in the past but not now??? --> make no sense

(E) to suggest that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal and that its trunk originally evolved Good. Simple present is adequate. Also "and that its trunk" is parallel with "that the elephant"

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!

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...

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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Is Option A also incorrect due to subjunctive issue as that suggests that elephant are should be the right thing that is subjunctive form of is should be applicable

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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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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.

Present tense is used for general characteristics. It is the take away here.

(A) that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolving -> "is" is making sense. But, descended and evolving is not parallel.

(B) that has suggested the elephant descended from an aquatic animal, its trunk originally evolving- > Verb tense error. It is not past tense.

(C) suggesting that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal with its trunk originally evolved- > Verb tense error. It is not past tense.

(D) to suggest that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal and its trunk originally evolved- >Verb tense error. It is not past tense.

(E) to suggest that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal and that its trunk originally evolved- > "Is" is making sense and another aspect descended is parallel with evolved. It looks better!

So, I think E.

The intent of the sentence is to speak about the descendence of present-day Elephant, whose trunk originally evolved as a kind of snorkel. This is a tough question I did not focus on all mistakes in an option rather I tried to figure out at least one mistake in an option to eliminate that.

A. We have conjunction "and" which is not parallel with the subordinate clause that suggests. Evolving is an adjective but suggest is a verb. Again the word evolving means the trunk of an elephant is still evolving. But this is not the purpose of the writer. It should be a complete past ''evoloved".

B. The elephant descended is in simple past form, which is completely wrong because the embryologists have found evidence for present day elephant. Again the last word "evolving" has the same problem as mentioned in A.

C. Had descended means the elephant descended sometime in the past. It's not telling about the present-day elephant.

D. Same problem like C.

E. Two clauses are perfectly compared starting with that .. .. that and the verb "evolved" has its appropriate tense.

The answer is E.
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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

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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I did not choose the correct version cause I thought "to" stood for an "intent", I've encountered many SC guides saying that, am I wrong?

Answer: Main consideration for this question is as below
1. Parallelism - Evidence suggests two things- that x and that Y
2. Fanboys- We can connect two independent clauses just with 'and' without a comma
3. Verb form- Proper verb form dominates the present participle - suggesting

So E is the answer

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.