ShreyasJavahar wrote:
Ozzy11100 wrote:
Ehh... another question of questionable (imo) quality from a 3rd party provider.
I understand the question writers logic, but it's a hell of an assumption to assume that an animal CAN'T shed a bone fragment when escaping from a predator. Which is the premise upon which the OA rests.
Like, who among us can say with certainty that that's a valid assumption? Why couldn't they shed a bone fragment? The bones of the tail could be in sufficient excess of 1 meter long. Who's to say that they aren't? I doubt there are many zoologists/palaeontologists here.
Basically, the OA requires us to make certain fairly unrigorous assumptions to rule out the other answers, yet requires us NOT to make similar assumptions about the correct answer. It's a bit like having your cake and eating it too!
A decent try, but another swing and a miss, nevertheless, in my opinion.
I did initially use the reasoning that an animal doesn't "shed" something that is on the inside. By definition, shedding is the sloughing off of an external layer or component.
Another run-through of the passage revealed a stronger reason for B to be the answer. The phrase "all 225 bones" implies straight away that there are no bones missing from either fossil, so regardless of any presupposed zoological acumen, option B has the least bearing on why one fossil's tail is shorter. The fact that no bones are absent from either fossil tells us that neither animal lost part of its tail by the evasive manoeuvre outlined in B.
I'd like to hear your points of agreement/disagreement so we can get to the bottom of this question.
Hey mate,
The crux of my criticism rests on this assumption, as you've made, that, "The fact that no bones are absent from either fossil tells us that neither animal lost part of its tail by the evasive manoeuvre outlined in B." I'm saying it's not unreasonable to believe that an animal could lose part of it's tail WITHOUT losing bones, i.e. it loses part of a bone - total number unchanged.
In light of this, I think the arguments for/against the OA's correctness are largely semantic, and that one could make similar arguments to justify the correctness of the remaining answer choices.