Rock samples taken from the remains of an asteroid about twice the

The "no" above was in reference to exactly that. I don't think we'll see "estimated at" in a correct answer. However, English is tricky--it depends on the intended meaning. We certainly can't say "estimated at X years old." The idiom is "estimated to be." But what about something else? I could imagine a sentence that said "The damage was estimated at $45 million dollars." This makes more sense than "to be," since a rock sample can BE millions of years old, but damages can't BE millions of dollars. Rather, millions of dollars in damages occurred.

Having said all that, I don't have an official SC question to validate that usage for the GMAT. If anyone can find a correct official answer with ANY use of "estimated at," I'd be interested to see it.

This is interesting. I am reasonably sure that estimated to be is actually better.

An official sentence:

Paleontologists believe that fragments of a primate jawbone unearthed in Burma and estimated to be 40 to 44 million years old provide evidence of a crucial step along the evolutionary path that led to human beings.

kaomanfen
Yes, evidence is always singular/uncountable. That doesn't mean that a noun that serves as evidence must also be singular. In E, we're saying that the samples (plural) are evidence (singular). Together, the set of samples serve as evidence. By contrast, in the example you provided, evidence is the actual subject, so we must use a singular noun.

Rock samples taken from the remains of an asteroid about twice the size of the 6-mile-wide asteroid that eradicated the dinosaurs has been dated to be 3.47 billion years old and thus is evidence of the earliest known asteroid impact on Earth.

The modifier in bold red it modifying - remains of asteroid or asteroid. Also is this modified "adjective phase". If so should it have a comma before it or not?

Hi Experts,

Could you please provide your comments for option C and option E.

Dated to be vs Dated at

Thanks

Do refer the excerpt from Manhattan Sentence Correction Sixth Edition.

I solved this question correctly but I have one question.
In parallelism, Don't the entities have to have similar verb tense?
For example in the correct choice,
(have been & .. is...) > present perfect & Simple present
Is there any rules that states that they both have to have the same tense? I studied it but can't be sure.

please advise

thanks

Hi Harshani, indeed this is often a source of confusion.

Tenses and voice (active / passive voice) are not a part of parallelism. So, the various parallel entities of a sentence can have different tense/voice.

Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana has a handy small note on how tenses and voice are not part of parallelism. Have attached the corresponding section of the book, for your reference.

Hi GMATNinjaTwo, aragonn, sudarshan22, GMATNinja, hazelnut, Vyshak, generis, daagh,

I am still not clear is "dated to be" is correct in option C or not as few experts states "dated at" is correct and few states "dated to be" is also correct.

Could you please clear my confusion.

Gmatprep550 "Dated to be" is not correct. I think people were pointing out that we say "estimated to be" and "dated at." I don't see any support for "dated to be," and I'm quite confident that this would not fly on the GMAT.

Thanks DmitryFarber for clarification I might have misread that part, Just wanted to confirm one more thing is usage of "estimated at" is correct in the GMAT?

Need your help, i was reading your pdf regarding "that" usage and this question appeared in that PDF ,and in that PDF you said rock samples is the subject because "taken from" can't be verb as it is modifier because it doesn't have is/was/has/had in front of that, but after "that" which represent asteroid eradicated is verb even though it doesn't have was/is/has/had preceding that please explain?

Hi Rishabh, it's the other way round. If was/is/has precedes a verb form, then it's a participle (modifier).

In this case, since eradicated is not preceded by was/is/has, eradicated is a verb.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses difference between Verb and Participle, its application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

thank you for quick reply, but i took egamt course and i found that verb ed if preceded by is/was/had then we can call it as verb but if it doesn't have these is/was/had before ed verb then it is modifier. So i found this question and i asked egmat people this question

There seems to be an interpretation issue Rishabh. Let's take this example:

Peter is done with his job.

done is clearly a past participle (and not a verb); did is the simple past tense verb of the verb do.

sir lets talk about the question as an example if rock samples were taken/ have taken/ had taken then it will work as verb isn't it this is given by egamt and i agree but because there is no were/have/had they told me its a modifier? If possible i will attach a screenshot of that

Rishabh, taken is a past participle (took is the simple past tense verb of the verb take).

Thanks for the screenshot. It's best if you directly get in touch with them for clarity on this point.