In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record, Mary Lea

Here's (D) again, with the subject and verb in bold:


Mary Leakey isn't the subject of the clause; Mary Leakey's contributions is the subject, and that's a plural noun. So the correct form of the verb is "includes."

I hope this helps!

In (E), I thought discovering is parallel with painstaking.

Why these two are not parallel? How to avoid this kind of trap? generis

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Hi, GMATNinja

I understood your deep & great explanation except the part explained in option E .
gerund and noun form can be parallel to each other .

You have mentioned 's + gerund ll to NOUN form is not allowed .Could you elaborate a bit about this as I don't see such format in opt E or may be my brain isn't able to catch what you are saying for opt E .
Leakey’s (apostrophe S format )contributions to archaeology include HER
1) discovering(GERUND ) the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and
2) painstaking documentation (NOUN) of

I am assuming here HER can act as common for both parallel things ... (i.e gerund & noun can share HER right? )

First off, I want to clarify that I did not say that (E) uses a structure that is "not allowed" . As I say over and over again, there are very few concrete "rules" that you can apply to GMAT SC. You have to examine each answer choice, think about the meaning, and determine which choice is the best out of the five choices in THAT problem.

Back to your question... yes, the "her" could be applied to both items in the parallel list. But we could also only apply "her" to the first item in the list. In choice (E), the reader has to make that choice. Choice (D), however, is not open to interpretation, so that's one vote in favor of (D) over (E).

And is having a gerund parallel to a regular noun wrong or "not allowed"? No, but the parallelism in choice (D) is cleaner (two regular nouns). That's another vote in favor of (D) over (E).

Like I said in my original explanation, (E) isn’t a total disaster -- it's just weaker than choice (D).

I hope that helps!

i knew D is correct but "include her" didn't sound good. can someone explain meaning????

"Activities at the resort include (1) snow-shoeing, (2) hiking, and (3) cross-country skiing." - The word "include" is used to introduce a list of examples of activities. In other words, a list of resort activities would contain those three items.

The same is true in choice (D): "Leakey's contributions include (1) her discovery and (2) her painstaking documentation." In other words, a list of Leakey's contributions would contain the discovery and the documentation. The two possessive pronouns ("her") simply modify those two things, telling us whose discovery and whose documentation we are talking about.

I hope that helps!

In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record, Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting East African cave paintings.

Test Points: Parallelism & Comparison

(A) Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting ("evidence of...“ and “ painstakingly documenting" is a broken parallelism)

(B) Leakey contributed to archaeology by her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and by painstakingly documenting (Same reason as A)

(C) Leakey was a contributor to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and with her painstaking documentation of ( incorrectly compare Leakey to her work)

(D) Leakey’s contributions to archaeology include her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and her painstaking documentation of

(E) Leakey’s contributions to archaeology include her discovering the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstaking documentation of (”include her discovering...“ is not idiomatic)

In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil record, Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting East African cave paintings.

Option Elimination -
"her" can refer to Mary Leaky (noun) or Mary Leaky's (noun in possessive case) - Eliminating the options here just because we may be less familiar with possessive pronouns referring to a noun in possessive case is not the right strategy here. At best, it is a red herring. We have to overcome this barrier to look for other issues to eliminate the options.

(A) Leakey contributed to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting - "And" demands parallelism. On the left side of "and," we have a prepositional phrase "with her discovery," and on the right side, we have a gerund "painstakingly documenting" - not parallel.

(B) Leakey contributed to archaeology by her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and by painstakingly documenting - There is nothing grammatically wrong with this option: "discovery" - noun can be parallel to "documenting." Here is an example - Doctors generally agree that such factors as cigarette smoking, eating rich foods high in fats, and alcohol consumption not only do damage by themselves but also aggravate genetic predispositions toward certain diseases.
Here, three factors - smoking (gerund), eating (gerund), and consumption (noun) are perfectly parallel. So Noun can be parallel to Noun can be parallel to ING OF can be parallel to ING. BUT the preference is N>ING of >ING. Now, between B and D (that we'll discuss), we have noun versus noun parallelism as against noun versus ING parallelism here in B, and based on the preference, any option with the noun versus noun parallelism is preferred over others. Again, there is nothing wrong with this option - it's just that between B and D - D is preferred. And if you got this question wrong, it's not the end of the world; keep practicing.

(C) Leakey was a contributor to archaeology with her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and with her painstaking documentation of - Leaky contributed is preferred over Leaky was a contributor.

(D) Leakey’s contributions to archaeology include her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and her painstaking documentation of - contributions (subject) and plural verb (include). "her discovery" - noun parallel to "painstaking (adjective) documentation" - noun. Perfect. But in order to reach this option and keep it, we have to expand our knowledge that passive pronouns can refer to nouns (we know) but also nouns in the possessive case.

(E) Leakey’s contributions to archaeology include her discovering the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstaking documentation of - discovering (gerund) and on the other side of and we have documentation (noun) if you are looking at "painstaking," its an adjective. Again, as we discussed in B, construction in option D is a preferred one over others.


Now let's look at the 2nd version of the sentence to consolidate our learnings.

In addition to her work on the Miocene hominid fossil, Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology through her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and through her painstaking documentation of East African cave paintings.

A) Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology through her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and through her painstaking documentation of - the prepositional phrase "through her discovery (noun)" is parallel to the prepositional phrase "through her painstaking documentation (noun)." Moreover, a noun is parallel to a noun.

B) Mary Leakey contributed to archaeology by her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting - noun (discovery) and gerund (painstakingly documenting)

C) Mary Leakey was a contributor to archaeology by discovering the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and with her painstaking documentation of -same as we discussed for C above.

D) Mary Leakey's contributions to archaeology include her discovery of the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstakingly documenting - discovery (noun) and documenting (gerund) preference, as we discussed above. In option A, a noun parallel to a noun is preferred.

E) Mary Leakey's contributions to archaeology include her discovering the earliest direct evidence of hominid activity and painstaking documentation of -Same as we discussed in E above.