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

Question

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

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/01/world/slumbering-in-the-egyptian-desert-a-titan-of-a-dinosaur.html

Digging at an oasis in the Egyptian desert,  paleontologists have found huge fossil bones of what they say appears to have been the second most massive dinosaur that ever lived .

daagh · Accepted Answer

Saurab
Let's face it. If a dinosaur weren't the subject what could be? Neither the dead fossil bones nor the paleontologists could be described as the dinosaur that ever lived. The only animal to be stated in the thread is the dinosaur. The substitution by the singular dinosaur will also negate the desert or the oasis as the contenders. There is absolutely no way for any other subject to be the subject of the verb 'appears'.
The problem could be that you couldn't confidently fix it as the subject of the clause starting with 'what appears.. to be."
because it happens to be an inverted clause. Here 'what' is the pronoun that stands for the subject that comes later.

On this point, I suggest you go through the Free dictionary ( https://www.thefreedictionary.com/what), especially the usage notes, after which I don't think you will have any doubts about 'what'.

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

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

Notice that, in (A), "what" refers to or represents "the second most massive dinosaur." Since "the second most massive dinosaur" is singular, "what" is understood to be singular. Thus, there is a subject-verb agreement issue, since "what," which is understood to be singular, does not agree with the plural "appear."

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

In (C), "what" once again refers to the singular "the second most massive dinosaur," but this time the sentence is correct, because the singular "what" agrees with the singular "appears."

targetbusiness · Answer

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

chippoochan · 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"

naval2272 · Answer

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

saurabh9gupta · Answer

GMATNinja   daagh  SIRS

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

plz guide

mSKR · Answer

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 appear  s ] to be  the second most  massive dinosaur S  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!

AndrewN · Answer

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

soondoobu · Answer

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

soondoobu · Answer

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?

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

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.

shivendrapatil23 · Answer

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.

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

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

Vatsal7794 · Answer

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

EducationAisle · Answer

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.

GMATNinja · Answer

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!

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

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

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