- Wed Sep 28, 2022 9:29 pm
#97515
Hi,
So after posting my thoughts and struggles, for some reason, I always feel that I should go back and do more before I have someone else do the heavy-lifting for me, and I think that I figured it out; here is my analysis.
With respect to the paradox/ discrepancy, in that one glacier area we have two records from the beetles fossils and from the pollen fossils suggesting contradicting accounts of when the warmer climate began, hence the discrepancy: when on the one hand, the insect (beetles) record suggest that the warmer climate began immediately after the melting of the glacier; on the other hand, the pollen record suggest that the warm climate did not begin until long after.
In retrospect, the paradox is simple, contrary to what I thought. Also contrary to what I thought, the answer-choices do not have different sets of assumptions as to how they resolve the paradox; they each solve the same paradox in the context of the stimulus; but they come at it from different angles, or in it result in different outcomes sometimes in favor of the beetles fossils records as in answer-choice D and B, and others in favor of the pollen records as in A and C.
Here we go:
As to answer A, we were looking at cold-beetles fossils but we thought we were looking at the warm ones; and cold-weather beetles by definition survive colder climates, which mean that the warmer climate had not begun; and as a consequent of this confusion, we erroneously inferred that the warmer climate began immediately after the melting of the glacier.
Stated differently, we confused the warm-weather beetles for the cold ones; or we substituted the warm-weather beetles for the cold ones.
In the case of A, the pollen records are the more likely accurate ones, because the beetles fossils records were for the wrong beetles, the cold-weather ones, not the warm-weather ones.
Answer-choice B, to my mind was the easiest to eliminate, if the warm-weather plants cannot establish themselves as quickly as can beetles in new environments, which in the context of the stimulus is the post-glacier in the "one area," then it would stand to reason that the plants fossils would be younger than the beetles fossils, or the beetles fossils older records; hence "the long after" corresponding to the pollen records, and "the immediately after" corresponding to the beetles. Simply put, the beetles showed up before the plants, hence their earlier fossils.
Clearly if it takes longer for the plants to establish themselves, it must the follow that the beetles records are accurate and the warmer climate began immediately after the melting of the glacier!
C is similar to be in that it suggests an implicit contrasts between the beetles existing before the plants, hence the discrepancy in the records. I think this is what the explanation earlier, by nicholaspavic, meant in terms of C dealing with both the beetles and the plants, as opposed to only the insects! Answer-choice B explicitly contrasts the beetles with the plants, whereas C implicitly does; C is implicit in that it does not explicitly mention the plants being late or later than the beetles.
C, accordingly, suggests that the warmer climate was not immediate after the melting of the glacier, because the beetles can survive the glacier whereas the plants had to wait for the warmer climate.
As to D, I found it more similar to answer-choice A than to C, in that D suggests that the unevenness of the spread of the pollen might have mislead us to believe that the absence of the pollen fossils in that one area meant the absence of the return of the plants, when the reality is that the pollen did return but was not spread there as the result of the unevenness of the spread.
D leads to the converse of A in that the beetles fossils records might be the accurate one for the plants' fossils were misinterpreted by the disproportionate dissemination of the pollens.
Finally, E is the correct answer-choice because it concerns the birth and evolution of the species of the beetles. However, according to the stimulus, we know that both the beetles and the pollen "retuned after the Ice Age," and so (or "and therefore," thank you Adam Tyson for your previous post on the interpretation of "and so") the information as to when the beetles species came to being, or whether they did before the plants is irrelevant because we know per the stimulus from the phrase that "[they] retuned" that they both had existed before the Ice Age.
So, as to E, not only does it not resolve the paradox, but it does not even deepen it, it is irrelevant to it!
Okay, now nicholaspavic's explanation makes perfect sense.
Please, PowerScore experts, correct me if I am wrong.
I appreciate you!
Mazen
