Paleontologists recently discovered teeth from

Answer choices

1. A

   No Impact6% picked this

   Neither tooth size nor overall body size is completely uniform among adult members of most

   This is like the wishy-washy trap answer on so many Strengthen / Weaken tasks where it states an empty truth like - things differ - things fluctuate - changes happen No one thinks that tooth or body size would every be 100% uniform (i.e. totally identical) across all adult members of any species. So this answer is telling us nothing more than a hollow truth we all know from common sense.

   6%
2. B

   Unrelated to Goal6% picked this

   The tooth wear that naturally occurs in many animals over the course of their adult years did not result in a significant change in

   This answer is not allowing us say "smaller teeth proves smaller mammoth", which is our task on this question. The fact that this is ruling out an idea with the word "not" should make us think, "What is this doing, selling us some Necessary Assumption like we don't know what question type we're doing?"

   6%
3. C

   Weakens, if anything2% picked this

   Unusually small mammoth teeth found at locations other than the island have always been those of juvenile mammoths

   All this does is make it seem like usually when we find smaller teeth it's not from an adult. That wouldn't help the author. He has asserted that the small teeth we found on this island are from an adult, and he needs that to be true because he's using it to conclude that adults on the island were smaller mammoths than were adult mammoths elsewhere.

   2%
4. D

   Correct83% picked this

   Tooth size among adult woolly mammoths was always directly proportional to the overall size

   Why this is right

   This allows us to say that "smaller teeth proves smaller mammoth", since tooth size and overall size are always directly proportional. If the teeth were 25% smaller, than the mammoths were 25% smaller, thus proving the author's conclusion.

   Skill tested: Sufficient Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   83%
5. E

   No Impact: number / variety3% picked this

   Woolly mammoths of the kind that lived on the island had the same number and variety of teeth as

   We don't really care whether the island mammoths had the same assortment of teeth that non-island mammoths had. We only care about whether we're allowed to go from noticing "their teeth were smaller" to concluding "their whole bodies were smaller".

   3%