While digging at an oasis in the Egyptian desert, paleontologists foun

Confused between Appear vs. Appears, I selected 'A', which was wrong.
Kindly help narrowing down to right answer.

My first trial I chose "B" and then realized that I mistakenly identify the subject of "Appear"
Ok let's take a look at original sentence
"While digging at an oasis in the Egyptian desert, paleontologists found huge fossil bones from what appear to be the second most massive dinosaur to ever live."

So here's the question what does "What" refers to??
logically if you look at the sentence, you can make simplify version as
"Paleontologists found bones from something"
Here you can use your common sense to answer where the bones are from??
Obviously they must be found from "the dinosaur" so the proper Verb for what should be singular V.

Or you can answer this question by typical question sentence struture
Let's say you want to change the sentence "The dinosaur appears to be most massive dinosaur."
How can we change it into question sentence form? Normally we do it in this structure "Wh. question word + V. + S."
So you can see that the real subject is behind V. that's why your answer should be "appears"

A) "what appear to be" should modify "massive dinosaur". Since dinosaur is singular, "appear" is incorrect usage
B) Same as A
C) Correct
D) "which" incorrectly refers paleontologists
E) too wordy and repeats the error of A

GMATNinja daagh SIRS

i think the contenders are ABC but i am not able to understand how the subject is the dinosaur

plz guide

While digging in the Egyptian desert,

(C) paleontologists found huge fossil bones from what appears to be the second most massive dinosaur that ever lived
new C: paleontologists found huge fossil bones from what appears[/s] to be [s]the second most massive dinosaurS that ever lived

AndrewN AjiteshArun: I would like to confirm if I change dinosaur to dinosaurS then appears would change to appear?
I am little confused, so your insights would be helpful.
( I read as : paleontologists found huge fossil bones from XYZ. what is XYZ .
in new D: XYZ is dinosaurs, so the sentence should be read as
paleontologists found huge fossil bones from things that appear to be XYZs
paleontologists found huge fossil bones from thing that appearS to be XYZ

Am I right in analysis?

Thanks!

Hello, mSKR. There is some debate over whether a substantive clause, in this case the what clause, must act as a singular subject or may adopt a plural subject-verb agreement. In general, it is safer to treat it as a singular entity, particularly on the GMAT™. I am not as comfortable with your proposed sentence as I am with the original for a different reason, though. The superlative most in most massive is a comparison within a larger group, and in this sentence, that group encompasses all dinosaurs. You would say the second most massive dinosaur, not the second most massive dinosaurs, just as you would say, in a different sentence, the second richest person, not the second richest persons/people.

For more on substantive clauses, I would suggest this Magoosh article. Happy reading.

- Andrew

GMATNinja MartyTargetTestPrep i am struggling to see the subject verb error here between answer choice A and C. can you please elaborate on this?

MartyTargetTestPrep thanks! in this case, seems like "what" is acting as a pronoun? and that "what" can either act as singular or plural? hard for me to even think of it as a pronoun!

Are there any other errors that you see in A?

Yes, "what" is a pronoun, and it can be understood to be singular of plural.

In (A) the split infinitive "to ever live" is not ideal. Split infinitives can be OK, but in this particular instance, the meaning conveyed is a little funny. To do what? To ever live, as if "ever living" is a particular type of living.

While digging at an oasis in the Egyptian desert, paleontologists found huge fossil bones from what appear to be the second most massive dinosaur to ever live.

(A) paleontologists found huge fossil bones from what appear to be the second most massive dinosaur to ever live

(B) paleontologists found huge fossil bones from what appear to be the second most massive dinosaur ever living

(C) paleontologists found huge fossil bones from what appears to be the second most massive dinosaur that ever lived

(D) huge fossil bones have been found by paleontologists, which appear to be from the second most massive dinosaur ever living

(E) huge fossil bones were found from what appear to paleontologists to be the second most massive dinosaur that ever lived


Solution:
Confused between A & C: appear or appears?

Here the dinosaur whose fossil bones were discovered is compared with rest other dinosaurs known till now and after comparing, the sentence tells that, the dinosaur whose fossil bones were discovered appears to be the second most massive dinosaur.
Other way could be: from what, tells us about the entire scenario or a picture of huge fossil bones as a whole, and this scenario or picture seems to be singular and so appears is preferred to appear.

Hello everyone,

We hope this finds you well.

To simplify the point made above a bit, we can just say that the singular verb "appears" is the correct one because this verb is meant to act upon the singular pronoun "what".

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

While digging at an oasis in the Egyptian desert, paleontologists found huge fossil bones from what appear to be the second most massive dinosaur to ever live.

(A) paleontologists found huge fossil bones from what appear to be the second most massive dinosaur to ever live

(B) paleontologists found huge fossil bones from what appear to be the second most massive dinosaur ever living

(C) paleontologists found huge fossil bones from what appears to be the second most massive dinosaur that ever lived

(D) huge fossil bones have been found by paleontologists, which appear to be from the second most massive dinosaur ever living

(E) huge fossil bones were found from what appear to paleontologists to be the second most massive dinosaur that ever lived

Hi Experts

GMATNinja @VeritasKarishma EducationAisle ChrisLele mikemcgarry AjiteshArun egmat sayantanc2k RonPurewal DmitryFarber MagooshExpert avigutman EMPOWERgmatVerbal MartyTargetTestPrep ExpertsGlobal5 IanStewart
other experts AnthonyRitz

Can someone please tell me the difference between to ever live and that ever lived
And which is correct in this sentence?
Option A & C

Actually since dinosaurs are long extinct, to have ever lived (perfect infinitive) would have been a better choice.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses perfect infinitive. Have attached the corresponding section of the book, for your reference.

Thankfully, the GMAT isn't expecting you to make that decision! There's lots of good discussion in the thread, explaining why we need "appears" (singular) and not "appear" (plural), so you can rule out (A) without worrying about the distinction between "to ever live" vs. "that ever lived."

If (A) also had "appears", we'd be in a tough spot. Is "to ever live" absolutely WRONG? Probably not. Is "that ever lived" better? Maybe. But again, we don't need to make that call, so no sense wasting brain cells trying to invent rules for this sort of thing.

I hope that helps a bit!