French divers recently found a

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Stimulus

French divers recently found a large cave along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The cave is accessible only through an underwater tunnel. The interior of the cave is completely filled with seawater and contains numerous large stalagmites, which are stony pillars that form when drops of water cave floor, leaving behind mineral deposits that accumulate over time.

What this question is testing

Most Supported

Your task

Break the argument into its conclusion and evidence, then do exactly what the question stem asks with that structure.

Common trap

Answers that sound relevant to the topic but don't connect to the argument's actual reasoning.

Winning move

Predict what a right answer must do, then test each choice against the conclusion-evidence gap.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question

The information above most strongly supports which one of

Answer choices

Contradiction8% picked this
The Mediterranean Sea was at a higher level in the past than
If anything, we would say that the sea used to be lower. This cave interior had to be open-air at some point, or else you couldn't have stalagmites form. If the cave is currently underwater but used to be open-air, then the water level probably used to be lower.
8%
Correct80% picked this
The water level within the cave is higher now than it
Why this is right
You can't have a stalagmite form unless there's a way for water to drip off the ceiling onto the floor. If you dropped water into a pool, a stalagmite wouldn't form, because the drop would just get washed away. The water has to keep hitting the same spot on the cave floor, so that mineral deposits slowly get higher and higher until a stalagmite has formed. Since the cave is currently filled with seawater but at some point it was possible for water to drip off the ceiling onto the cave floor, we know that the water level was lower in the past (i.e. it wasn't filled with water).
Skill tested: Most Supported · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
80%
Too Strong: first people2% picked this
The French divers were the first people who knew that the tunnel leading to
Just because we're only hearing about French divers finding this cave doesn't mean they were the first to find it. Perhaps this cave has been written about in ancient Greek books. Perhaps Algerian divers had already found this cave before. We don't know.
2%
Out of Scope: 2nd entrance3% picked this
There was once an entrance to the cave besides the
As far as we know, the cave is only accessible via an underwater tunnel. We have no way to say that there used to be a separate entrance.
3%
Unknown Comparison6% picked this
Seawater in the Mediterranean has a lower mineral content now than it had when the
We can't rank the mineral content of seawater now vs. then. As long as the seawater had any mineral content, it would potentially be able to form stalagmites over time, so the existence of stalagmites doesn't tell us anything in particular about mineral concentration.
6%

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