#2 - The teeth of some mammals show "growth rings" that

[Luke Haqq]

Hi rjulien!

The wording of answer choice (A) seems to be quite close to what could be correct. The answer choice states that the evidence most strongly supports that the excavated pigs died "in an unusually early winter." If we switched the order of those words, though, to the pigs dying "unusually early in winter," that rewording looks at least much closer to correct--we don't know the effect of an early versus late winter from the stimulus, but rather only the types of teeth bands that appear in winter versus summer. Although close, even that rewording still seems problematic because it indicates that they died "unusually early" in the winter.

The last line of the stimulus tells us the the last deposited, translucent bands were "only about half the normal width." We also know that these are "constant depositing layers." If they were only, say, a tenth of the normal width, that would be strong evidence that the excavated pigs died unusually early in winter. Being about half the normal width, however, is an indication that they died about halfway through winter. This is reflected in answer choice (C), which indicates that they likely died "roughly in midwinter."

[ericsilvagomez]

Hi,

Compared to the other explanations I have seen so far, this one is probably one of the shortest, but the language in it confused me, so I did not understand the explanations for any of the answer choices. I understand that "about half the same normal width" means midwinter, but can you elaborate on your reasoning for the other explanations?

[Luke Haqq]

Hi ericsilvagomez!

We can certainly work on embellishing on the original explanation. In the meantime, are there particular answer choices besides the correct one that you found particularly compelling? If so, do feel free to explain your reasoning, and we'll be happy to address why a given answer choice is wrong.

[ericsilvagomez]

Hi,

I selected answer choice D. After reading the explanation, my reasoning for choosing that answer makes less sense. I read "excavated Stone Age" and assumed that the animals died under some extreme weather. I did not understand the rest of the paragraph as much because of the vocabulary.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Eric,

There are a number of logical reasoning questions that deal with various science topics, not to mention the science passage in Reading Comp.

The main thing to remember is that you are not expected to know any specialized topics or terminology, so everything that you need to answer the question is provided for you in the text.

Some students who dislike science topics tend to "zone out" as soon as they start reading about these unfamiliar topics. Try to resist this and instead try to simplify the text in your own words to help your understanding.

For example, in this stimulus, the key idea is that some mammals show "growth rings" on their teeth that are basically different colors (opaque vs. transparent) based on whether it was summer or winter.

Don't worry about exactly what "cementum" is for example because you don't really need to know to answer the question. All that you need to know about cementum is that it was the stuff deposited on their teeth that formed the "growth ring" layers. Other than that, we don't really care about cementum.

The stimulus tells us that the layers were basically all the same width, except the final layer, which has half the width of the others and was translucent (which corresponds to winter). That is enough to infer that these mammals died in midwinter, which would explain why the layer is half the width of the other layers.

There are many examples of these numbers/percentages ideas appearing in LR questions that relate to proportionality, so it's good to familiarize yourself with these concepts.