In the Gulf of Mexico's 'dead zone,' every summer aquatic

stuff like this is easy once you see the silly mistakes you overlook. I almost chose A. But double back when I realized A and B are very similar.

There is something that is not congruous in rphardu’s thesis about the choice D. To call "the cause of which is excess nitrogen flushed down the Mississippi River" as the subject of the sentence is off the mark in the least. The actual parsing of the sentence is “Scientists say the cause of which is excess nitrogen flushed down the Mississippi River” in which case, the subject of the verb ‘are’ is simply ‘scientists’ and the phrase ‘the cause of which blah, blah’, the object. The phrase 'the cause of which' has no more function than to act as a benami for the relative pronoun ‘which’ and is used to circumvent the touch rule of relative pronouns. So I do not find anything grammatically wrong with D. But D is logically wrong because, nowhere in the original the passage, it is said that the scientists say this or that. It simply states ‘according to scientists’, which choice C religiously reproduces. That is the reason IMO C is better than D.


E is wrong because, when read along with the un-underlined previous part , the choice seems to say that New Jersey comes from the flushing; This is just akin to choice A and B which are wrong for using ‘which’ flouting the touch rule

But how does an essential modifier lead to the missing the verb in E?

Hello from the GMAT Club VerbalBot!

Thanks to another GMAT Club member, I have just discovered this valuable topic, yet it had no discussion for over a year. I am now bumping it up - doing my job. I think you may find it valuable (esp those replies with Kudos).

Want to see all other topics I dig out? Follow me (click follow button on profile). You will receive a summary of all topics I bump in your profile area as well as via email.