Hi jrashish,

Thank you for posting your query here.

Let’s take a look at the sentence structure of this sentence:

• Fossils of a whale (Clause-I)
o that (Clause-II)
• beached on an African shore more than a million years ago (Clause-II)
• and was subsequently butchered by hominids (Clause-II)
• have been recovered by paleontologists. (Clause-I)

So, this sentence has two clauses as shown. The subject verb pairs in both the clauses are highlighted.

Now, the dependent clause starting with “that” tells us two things about a whale:
1. It beached on an African shore at a certain time in the past
2. It was butchered by hominids.
So, the verbs "beached" and "was butchered" are parallel to each other.

Note that, active and passive verbs can be parallel to each other if their subject is the same. Let’s take another official example (correct version) with similar structure:

• Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shurtleff, Deborah Sampson, the first woman to draw a soldier's pension,
o joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22,
o was injured three times,
o and was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

Here, the list of the verbs for the subject Deborah Sampson is:
1. joined (Active Voice)
2. was injured (Passive Voice)
3. was discharged (Passive Voice)

As we can see, first verb is written in active voice while second and third verbs are in passive voice. However, these verbs are parallel. Similarly in the given sentence, "beached" and "was butchered" are parallel.



Hope this helps!
Deepak
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mikemcgarry chetan2u Can you please help me with my doubt of why the answer is :A: because FOSSILS are plural and in option A it is clearly violating the S-V Agreement with :WAS:

Thanks in advance.

Fossils of a whale that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids have been recovered by paleontologists.

A. that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids have
B. that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and then was subsequently butchered by hominids has
C. that beached on an African shore more than a million years ago, which was subsequently butchered by hominids, has
D. having been beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and subsequently butchered by hominids, have
E. having beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and then subsequently were butchered by hominids have

CHOICE A: Correct. Notice that the VERB TENSES ARE PARALLEL here. Normally, you might assume that "fossils" is the subject, but clearly the meaning of the sentence doesn't support that conclusion (fossils can't be "butchered", only whales can).

CHOICE B: Incorrect. The "then was" is not a big deal; it's functionally equivalent to "was subsequently" in Choice A. However, "has" is incorrect, because at that point we have stopped modifying the object (whale) and have returned to modifying the subject (fossils). We can't say "fossils has" ("they has"), so we move on.

CHOICE C: When we write in English ".... _______, which was ..." , then the "was" is presumably modifying a subject before the comma. However, this doesn't work because it was the whale that was butchered, not years or an African shore.

CHOICE D: "Having" is not by itself an actual verb, and should never be used as the main verb of a sentence, only as a modifier.

CHOICE E: Same problem as E.

PERFECT VERSION: Fossils of a whale, one which beached on an African shore more than a million years ago and was subsequently butchered by hominids, have been recovered by paleontologists.

-Brian


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