Five hundred million different species of living creatures have appear

I really would not bother about the Mayank; GMAT doesn't test on the usage of articles (a/an/the). In other words, articles would never be the only differentiating factor between two options. So, would always suggest that you look for other splits between options.

Hello experts,

I have a few doubts in this question.

1. What is the role of "vanishing" in option A? Is it acting as a verb or a modifier? And why is A wrong because of vanishing?

2. What is wrong with option B? I was stuck between B and E.

ChiranjeevSingh GMATNinja VeritasKarishma AndrewN Skywalker18 AjiteshArun

Thank you in advance!

Hello, ashmit99. It looks as if I have gotten to this query early enough not to be third in line. (I would still respond if I felt I had something new to add, other than to say that the other Experts had already done a fine job.) In (A), vanishing is indeed a problem. It seems to be filling the role of a verb, particularly if you examine the other answer choices. However, we cannot ignore the missing helping verb in to have or to be to make that interpretation stronger: nearly 99 percent of them are vanishing, for instance, leaves no room for interpretation. But, of course, that is not what we are dealing with. It seems that the word is instead modifying them, which itself refers to species, or, if you prefer the fuller version, different species of living creatures. A new issue arises when you consider what, exactly, vanishing may be modifying. Are the species vanishing from the face of the Earth, as the other sentences seem to imply in their own way, or are the species highly developed in the camouflage department, such that they can make themselves vanish (and be described as vanishing species of creatures)? Because the earlier usage of have appeared leads us to believe that some of these species may not exist in the present, we expect have vanished, an actual verb, to follow up on that idea. Vanishing as a modifier simply does not work in the sentence.

As for (B), the meaning of the sentence is open to interpretation because appeared within the embedded clause at the end—not have appeared—does not present a clear timeline. Are we commenting only on species from the past? (Choice (E), by contrast, extends into the present.) Did all five hundred million different species of living creatures co-exist? Were dinosaurs walking around with dodos and woolly mammoths? I know this sounds silly, but the simple past conjugation of the verb suggests as much, or at least we cannot argue that it does not. Choice (E) is a safer bet, in terms of the meaning it conveys.

I hope that helps clear your doubts. Thank you for thinking to ask.

- Andrew

can somebody help me out? Plz

Five hundred million different species of living creatures have appeared on Earth, nearly 99 percent of them vanishing.

(D) Of five hundred million different species of living creatures that have appeared on Earth, nearly 99 percent of them have vanished.


option D has "of them" in the dependent clause ", nearly 99 percent of them have vanished." Is this also problemetic?

p.s. is this grammer similar to ", some of which...(clause)" and ", some of them...(phrase)"?

Thanks in advance!

GMATNinja Could you please explain how the use of present perfect tense both for 'appearing' and 'vanishing' works? Doesn't it indicate that the vanishing and appearing are both continuing presently?

The sentence is telling us that nearly 99% of the five hundred million different species of living creatures that have appeared on Earth have vanished.

(B) Nearly 99 percent of five hundred million different species of living creatures that appeared on Earth have vanished.

(D) Of five hundred million different species of living creatures that have appeared on Earth, nearly 99 percent of them have vanished.

We need to use ‘the’ before ‘five hundred million different species’ to show that this is the total number of species that have appeared, not a subset of the number of species.

Take a simpler example:
Of the ten friends I have, four are coming tomorrow. (I have total ten friends)
Of ten friends I have, four are coming tomorrow. (Awkward! I may have more than ten friends but I am talking about ten only.)

Hence, options (B) and (D) are not correct.

(A) Five hundred million different species of living creatures have appeared on Earth, nearly 99 percent of them vanishing.

(B) Nearly 99 percent of five hundred million different species of living creatures that appeared on Earth have vanished.

(C) Vanished are nearly 99 percent of the five hundred million different species of living creatures that appeared on Earth.

The appearance of species is not complete. Many species appeared and more keep appearing. We are talking about the 500 million species that have already appeared on Earth as of now. Hence, the use of ‘appeared’ would be incorrect. It signals that the action happened in the past but is over now. We should use ‘have appeared’ to show that we are talking about the species that have appeared till now. Other species are appearing and will likely continue to appear in the future i.e. the time period is not over (discussed in ‘Simple Past vs Present Perfect’ section of the Tenses module). By the same logic, ‘have vanished’ would be correct since the period of vanishing is not over but many species have vanished (their vanishing is complete)

To take a simpler example,

I met him many times.
(means I don’t meet him anymore. I met him before he moved to another city etc.)

I have met him many times.
(means I have met him in the past and continue to do so in the present too)

Hence, options (A), (B) and (C) are not correct.
Option (A) uses present participle ‘vanishing’ as a modifier for the 99% of the five hundred million species which makes no sense. They have already vanished so we should use the verb ‘have vanished.’
Option (C) inverts the subject and verb. Though useful sometimes, this is not done routinely.

(D) Of five hundred million different species of living creatures that have appeared on Earth, nearly 99 percent of them have vanished.

Option (D) is incorrect also because it repeats ‘of them.’

Note with an example that we can write it correctly in one of two ways:

Of the ten friends I have, four are coming tomorrow.
Four of the ten friends I have are coming tomorrow.

Can we say ‘Of the ten friends I have, four of them are coming tomorrow’? No. We should not repeat ‘of what.’ If we start with it as a prepositional phrase, we should not mention it afterwards again.

(E) Of the five hundred million different species of living creatures that have appeared on Earth, nearly 99 percent have vanished.

All good.

Answer (E)

Hi,I still confused about "the " usage. " Choice B leaves open the possibility that more than 500 million diff species may have appeared on earth" Why the is so important here? I think no difference here with or without "the". What's the special usage? Can an expert elaborate it and give more examples please? It makes no sense to a non-native person-like me. Need help. Thanks a lot.

sayantanc2k

^^ it means B is still good choice, right? But, if something is appeared in the past how it be vanish in present?

Thanks for the nice explanation. Sir, can you help us by explaining the article issue ('the') issue in choice E, please?