hassan233
In D, is the use "although" incorrect?
I always thought of although as "Although X, Y happened".
That is not the way it is being used in this sentence.
Cardinal rule #1 for SC: do not invent rules!
Does "although" show up at the start of a sentence more often than it shows up between two clauses? Sure. Does that mean that it's wrong when it follows a clause? Nope. For instance:
Tim considers himself an excellent artist, although his primary medium involves finger-paint.
Here, "although" is functioning as a conjunction that connects two contrasting clauses. Nothing wrong with that.
Fortunately, (D) has some nice juicy errors. It begins with the modifying phrase, "Now living almost solely in the Rocky Mountains." Whatever is living in the Rockies has to come right after that phrase. Instead we get "
it would seem that elk were mountain dwellers."
There's no logical way to interpret this. "It" is singular, and there's no singular noun that the pronoun could possibly refer to. (We know "elk" is plural because of the phrase "elk were.") But if we interpret "it" as a dummy pronoun that doesn't have a referent, then we don't have anything living in the Rockies!
Moreover, "elk
were mountain dwellers," illogically uses a past tense verb. If the elk are living in the Rockies now, why would we say that they
were mountain dwellers? The whole point of the sentence is that they
are mountain dwellers!
So there's no need to burn any brain cells agonizing over the usage of "although." (D) has multiple concrete errors we can use to eliminate it.
I hope that helps!