from a male whiptail would be useless for parthenogenesis. Therefore, (B) is the answer.
D Choice (A) is the opposite of what the passage says, so it’s incorrect. The lizards have
different sets of chromosomes. The whiptails weren’t discovered in the 1960s; their genetic
makeup was found to be strange, so (B) is wrong. The lizards don’t require a male and
female, (C), but the clones come only from female whiptails, so the clones must be female.
Thus, (D) is correct.
A Think about the evidence in the passage that helped you answer the previous question:
Choice (A) clarifies that the clones come only from female whiptails, so the clones must be
female. Choices (B), (C), and (D) do not support this and are therefore incorrect.
D Choices (A) and (C) aren’t definitive enough and (B) is too general, making them all
incorrect. Choice (D) addresses the author’s argument that mating animals in captivity
defies ideas about how species evolve. If lizards never clone themselves in the wild, then
species outside of the lab don’t evolve through cloning. Thus, (D) is correct.
C The word somehow implies that scientists still don’t understand how female whiptails
clone themselves, so (C) is correct. Choice (A) is incorrect because it uses the word switch
in an incorrect and misleading way, while (B) is too vague and doesn’t answer the question.
Choice (D) addresses why the whiptails clone, but the sentence is referring to how they do
it, so (D) is incorrect.
C Look earlier in the sentence for the phrase the Earth’s surface sank more than 1 mile. Go
through the answer choices to find the one that matches this description. Choice (C) is
correct because a crater is a “large, bowl-shaped cavity in the earth.” Eliminate (A), (B),
and (D), as none of them match this physical description.
B The second paragraph primarily discusses the extensive time range of volcanic eruptions,
starting as far back as 400,000 years ago and as recently as 600 years ago. Use POE to
find the answer choice that matches this information. There is no evidence of another
eruption this century based on the passage, so eliminate (A). Choice (B) works because it
shows the large range of time in geologic terms. Choice (C) almost works, but the author is
not just trying to be ironic. The information is not relevant to the paragraph, so eliminate
(C). Choice (D) is incorrect because a relative term doesn’t fit; recently isn’t being
compared to any other variables. Choice (B) is the answer.
B The pronoun that precedes temblor, so it must refer to something earlier in the previous
sentence. The first sentence discusses a magnitude 5.4 earthquake struck 6 miles
southeast of the caldera, so (B) is correct because the temblor ended two decades of low
quake activity.
C The third sentence in paragraph 7 states that the geologists studied trees that were dying on
Mammoth Mountain from carbon dioxide, and that this would often precede volcanic
eruptions. This information suggests the possibility of a volcanic eruption. Choice (C) is a
good match for this information. There is no evidence to support (A) and (B), so eliminate