Logical Reasoning

PT155 · S1 · Q5 Of the dinosaurs of the birdlike group

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Of the dinosaurs of the birdlike group called ornithomimids, the later ones had toothless beaks and weak jaw muscles.

Curious Fact

Why did G.b. have a comblike plate inside its beak?

Hypothesis

G.b., like modern ducks and geese, fed by filtering food from water and mud (using this comblike plate).

Evaluate / Goal

To strengthen an Explanation for a Curious Fact, we need to either 1. rule out an Alternate Explanation 2. make the Author's Explanation more plausible

Strengthen questions are more likely to do the 2nd option there.

So we might see an answer ruling out an alternate explanation for the comblike plate (), but most likely we want to be more convinced that the comblike plate inside G.b.'s beak was used, just as ducks and geese use theirs, to strain out bits of food from water and mud.

5.

Which one of the following, if true, most bolsters the support for the paleontologists' hypothesis?

  1. Some dinosaurs with toothless beaks

    Unrelated to Goal

    This has nothing to do with assessing the function of the comblike plate in the beaks of G.b.

    1% picked this

  2. Toothless beaks and weak jaw

    Unrelated to Goal

    This has nothing to do with assessing the function of the comblike plate in the beaks of G.b.

    2% picked this

  3. Except for the comblike plates

    Weakens, if anything

    We wouldn't take this very seriously as a Weaken answer, but it's making the hypothesis a bit less plausible by making it seem like G.b. doesn't have much physiologically in common with ducks and geese. Since ducks and geese use their comblike plate to filter food, it benefits the author's hypothesis the more similar we can make G.b. seem to ducks and geese.

    3% picked this

  4. Correct

    Most G. bullatus fossils have

    Why this is right

    This mildly strengthens the plausibility of the hypothesis by giving us another similarity between G.b. and ducks and geese. This suggests that G.b. lived in areas near lakes, rivers, and other wet environments. Ducks and geese live in lakes, rivers, and other wet environments. Their comblike plates are adapted to filtering food in such environments. So if G.b. not only had a similar comblike plate but also lived in similar habitats, it would help build the case that this is the same adaptation, used to filter food from water and mud. This strengthens very little, but everything else does nothing, so it still wins as the best available answer. The hypothesis that the comblike beak is used to filter food from water and mud has the necessary assumption that this dinosaur was spending time around water and mud.

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

    93% picked this

  5. Paleontologists have not found evidence

    No Impact

    Finding out that G.b. is the only dino that had the comblike plate doesn't do anything to impact the plausibility of whether it used the plate to filter food from water and mud.

    2% picked this

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