托福閱讀真題Official 48 Passage 2（二）

托福閱讀真題Official 48 Passage 2（二）

Determining Dinosaur Diet

Determining what extinct dinosaurs ate is difficult,but we can infer some aspects of their dietary preferences.Traditionally,this information has been derived from direct evidence,such as stomach contents,and indirect evidence,such as establishing a correlation between particular body characteristics and diets of living animals and then inferring habits for dinosaurs.

Animals such as house cats and dogs have large,stabbing canine teeth at the front of the mouth and smaller,equally sharp teeth farther back in their jaws.Many of these animals are also armed with sharp claws.The advantage of teeth and claws as predatory tools is obvious.Now consider animals like cows,horses,rabbits,and mice.These animals have flat teeth at the back of the jaw that are analogous to and have the same function as grindstones.Unlike the meat-slicing and stabbing teeth of carnivores,the teeth of these animals grind and shred plant material before digestion.

More clues exist in other parts of the skull.The jaw joint of carnivores such as dogs and cats has the mechanical advantage of being at the same level as the tooth row,allowing the jaws to close with tremendous speed and forcing the upper teeth to occlude against the lower teeth with great precision.In herbivorous animals,rapid jaw closure is less important.Because the flat teeth of herbivores work like grindstones,however,the jaws must move both side to side and front to back.The jaw joints of many advanced herbivores,such as cows,lie at a different level than the tooth row,allowing transverse tearing,shredding,and compression of plant material.If we extend such observations to extinct dinosaurs,we can infer dietary preferences(such as carnivory and herbivory),even though we cannot determine the exact diet.The duck-billed dinosaurs known as hadrosaurs are a good example of a group whose jaw joint is below the level of the tooth row,which probably helped them grind up tough,fibrous vegetation.

Paleontologists would like to be much more specific about a dinosaur’s diet than simply differentiating carnivore from herbivore.This finer level of resolution requires direct fossil evidence of dinosaur meals.Stomach contents are only rarely preserved,but when present,allow us to determine exactly what these animals were eating.

In the stomach contents of specimens of Coelophysis(a small,long-necked dinosaur)are bones from juvenile animals of the same species.At one time,these were thought to represent embryonic animals,suggesting that this small dinosaur gave birth to live young rather than laying eggs.Further research indicated that the small dinosaurs were too large and too well developed to be prehatchling young.In addition,the juveniles inside the body cavity were of different sizes.All the evidence points to the conclusion that these are the remains of prey items and that,as an adult,Coelophysis was at least in part a cannibal.

Fossilized stomach contents are not restricted to carnivorous dinosaurs.In a few rare cases,most of them“mummies”(unusually well preserved specimens),fossilized plant remains have been found inside the body cavity of hadrosaurs.Some paleontologists have argued that these represent stream accumulations rather than final meals.The best known of these cases is the second Edmontosaurus mummy collected by the Sternbergs.In the chest cavity of this specimen,which is housed in the Senckenberg Museum in Germany,are the fossil remains of conifer needles,twigs,seeds,and fruits.Similar finds in Corythosaurus specimens from Alberta,Canada,have also been reported,indicating that at least two kinds of Late Cretaceous hadrosaurs fed on the sorts of trees that are common in today’s boreal woodlands.

A second form of direct evidence comes from coprolites(fossilized bodily waste).Several dinosaur fossil localities preserve coprolites.Coprolites yield unequivocal evidence about the dietary habits of dinosaurs.Many parts of plants and animals are extremely resistant to the digestive systems of animals and pass completely through the body with little or no alteration.Study of coprolites has indicated that the diets of some herbivorous dinosaurs were relatively diverse,while other dinosaurs appear to have been specialists,feeding on particular types of plants.The problem with inferring diets from coprolites is the difficulty in accurately associating a particular coprolite with a specific dinosaur.

Question 3 of 14

In paragraph 2,the author compares the teeth of cows,horses,rabbits,and mice to grindstones in order to explain

A.how certain kinds of teeth aid digestion

B.how the teeth of some familiar mammals differ from those of dinosaurs

C.why the back teeth of herbivores are larger than those of carnivores

D.why the back teeth of carnivores are just as sharp as their front teeth

正確答案：A

題目詳解

題型分類：修辭目的題

題干分析：第一種考察句子之間的關(guān)系。定位到原文Now consider animals like cows,horses,rabbits,and mice.These animals have flat teeth at the back of the jaw that are analogous to and have the same function as grindstones.Unlike the meat-slicing and stabbing teeth of carnivores,the teeth of these animals grind and shred plant material before digestion。

選項(xiàng)分析：

A選項(xiàng)為高度概括的選項(xiàng)，用grindstone是類比，用來使讀者更加明確食草動(dòng)物的牙齒特點(diǎn)，正確。

B選項(xiàng)錯(cuò)誤，文中用這句話不是為了例證現(xiàn)代動(dòng)物和恐龍的區(qū)別，反倒是相同點(diǎn)。

C選項(xiàng)食草動(dòng)物和食肉動(dòng)物牙齒不一樣，不是通過磨刀石比較出來的。

D選項(xiàng)例證食草動(dòng)物，和食肉動(dòng)物無關(guān)。

Question 4 of 14

Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage?Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.

A.The advantage of bringing the upper teeth directly against the lower teeth is a more precise bite.

B.Animals whose jaw joint is at the same level as their teeth can bite quickly and accurately.

C.The location of an animal’s jaw joint in respect to its teeth determines the speed at which it can close its jaws.

D.The carnivore jaw has the advantage of allowing the upper teeth to move with greater speed and precision than the lower teeth do.

正確答案：B

題目詳解

題型分類：簡化句子題

原文分析：考察識(shí)別主干內(nèi)容和核心邏輯的能力。主要內(nèi)容是有好處，好處用并列連詞鏈接tremendous speed and forcing the upper teeth to occlude against the lower teeth with great precision，一方面是速度快，另一方面是咬合精準(zhǔn)。

選項(xiàng)分析：

B選項(xiàng)主干是咬合速度快且準(zhǔn)，符合原文主要內(nèi)容，whose描述animal特點(diǎn)頜骨與牙齒處于同一水平，符合原文，因此B正確。

A選項(xiàng)主干是咬合精準(zhǔn)，缺少并列的速度快，of結(jié)構(gòu)描述的是上齒抵下牙，錯(cuò)沒提。

C選項(xiàng)主干是下頜骨的位置決定咬合的速度錯(cuò)。

D選項(xiàng)比較關(guān)系原文沒有，虛假邏輯錯(cuò)。

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