#9 - Concept Reference, Must Be True

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (D).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (E):


This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[Agent00729]

I was wondering if someone could explain this one. I couldn't determine any answer to be correct, so I ended up selecting E as what I thought was the "best" answer.

I understand that D is correct, but I don't see how. Couldn't there be a scenario where 1 out of 1 marine species (100%) went extinct during the Crustaceous and hundreds went extinct during the Permian? Crustaceous is still minor in comparison, but the percentage can still be higher than 77%

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Agent00729,

The reason your reading doesn't work here is because of the way the sentence in the passage is constructed, which states, "But the Cretaceous crisis was minor compared with the Permian extinctions 240 million years ago, during which between 77 and 96 percent of marine animal species perished." The suggestion here (even though it's not made directly explicit) is that the Cretaceous crisis was minor when compared specifically to a crisis in which 77-96% of marine animal species perished. So the author is relying on a percentage comparison to arrive at the conclusion that the Cretaceous crisis was "minor" in comparison. Since the only textual frame of reference is that percentage framing, the author must think (and suggest) that the Cretaceous crisis involved a (much) smaller percentage of marine species extinction.

The reason answer choice E isn't correct is that, while we know from context that the Cretaceous extinction ended the age of the dinosaurs, we don't know which (or how many) other animals became extinct during that extinction. It's possible other species' extinctions far outweighed the number of dinosaur species extinctions.

I hope this helps!

[Agent00729]

Got it, thanks! It's tough because sometimes I feel like they ask us to answer on what they literally specifically said, and other times they as us to read between the lines, like here.

[Jeremy Press]

Very true! It's in the language of the question stem. When it asks what the author "suggests," or "implies," or what you can "infer" from the author's statements, you get a little extra wiggle room to read between the lines. If the question asks what the author "states," or what is true "according to the passage," then you need to find something that's pretty explicitly stated. Does that make sense?

[Agent00729]

Yes, thanks. Up to this point I've essentially been treating all Must Be True questions as basically asking the same thing, regardless of the chosen word. Maybe I should be thinking about the "infer" questions as "It must be true that the author is inferring...", rather than thinking that what is inferred by the passage must be true. If that makes sense.