Researchers have found entombed in Burmese amber a 102-million-year

I have a doubt in this question -
Isn't the VERB-ing modifier 'providing' modifying 'researchers' and thus reads as the researchers themselves provide evidence of something?

GMATNinja AjiteshArun @VeritasPrepKarishma

Exactly My doubt
I marked B
Since the verb-ing modifier can be parallel to the verb-ed modifier

Mine too.
Can someone please provide the OE ?

@experts, VeritasKarishma could you please provide the OE.

[quote="BillyZ"]Researchers have found entombed in Burmese amber a 102-million-year-old tick grasping the feather of a Velociraptor, providing the first direct evidence that the tiny pests drank dinosaur blood.

(A) entombed in Burmese amber a 102-million-year-old tick grasping the feather of a Velociraptor, providing
(B) entombed in Burmese amber a 102-million-year-old tick grasping the feather of a Velociraptor and providing
(C) a 102-million-year-old tick grasping the feather of a Velociraptor entombed in Burmese amber and providing
(D) a 102-million-year-old tick grasping the feather of a Velociraptor entombed in Burmese amber, which provided
(E) a 102-million-year-old tick, entombed in Burmese amber, grasping the feather of a Velociraptor and providing



This is a good sentence that you can narrow down if you realize the ridiculousness of the parallelism at play. The researchers have found.......and found PROVIDING???? that is not correct. The researchers did not find providing! Hence we narrow it down to A and D. I always love seeing a, "which" because it is so easy to eliminate a choice that so blatantly is referring to the wrong noun. The Burmese amber did not provide evidence.

This is a question based on the errors of Modifiers and Sentence structure.

The sentence conveys the meaning that researchers have found a tick buried in Burmese amber. We also get the information that the tick was grasping the feather of a Velociraptor. The last part of the sentence is the modifier “providing the first direct evidence that the tiny pests drank dinosaur blood”. This is a participle phrase. The question is whether the participle phrase gives us more information about the entire main clause or whether the participle phrase conveys information about the tick.

We have clear reasons to rule out Options B, C, D, and E.

If we do a vertical scan of the latter end of the options, we see that the various options end in ‘providing’, ‘and providing’, and ‘which provide’.

In Options B, C, and E, the conjunction ‘and’ precedes the participle phrase. This might make us wonder whether the sentence has a parallelism error. If we were to take the sentence as such in these options, the meaning conveyed would be that the researchers found a tick entombed in amber, grasping the feather of a Velociraptor and providing evidence….
To explain further, the sentence conveys the meaning that the tick provided evidence. That is not the intended meaning. There is no parallelism error. It is an error of sentence structure.

The intended meaning is that the discovery of the tick in that condition provides evidence.

The intended meaning is not conveyed in these three options. Therefore, Options B, C, and E can be eliminated.

In Option D, the form of the modifier has been changed to that of a dependent clause beginning with a relative pronoun. The relative pronoun refers to the noun immediately before it, so, in this sentence, it would refer to Burmese amber. So, the meaning conveyed is that Burmese amber provided evidence. This is not the intended meaning either. So, Option D can also be eliminated.

It is only in Option A that the intended meaning is conveyed because of the participle phrase at the end of the sentence.

A participle phrase at the end of the sentence can modify either the noun immediately before it or the entire main clause.
If it is modifying the noun immediately before it, there should be no comma separating it from the rest of the sentence.
E.g. – I stood watching the sunlight dancing on the water. (‘dancing on the water’ modifies ‘sunlight’)

If it is modifying the main clause before it, it is separated from the main clause by a comma.

In this sentence, the participle phrase modifies the clause before it.

Therefore, A is the best option.
Jayanthi Kumar.

Hey EMPOWERgmatVerbal ,

entombed in Burmese amber a 102-million-year-old tick grasping the feather of a Velociraptor
a 102-million-year-old tick grasping the feather of a Velociraptor entombed in Burmese amber

I am confused between this split. How to find out which split is correct.? Does it make a difference in the meaning of the sentence as well??

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