SC - doubtful "that"

[Guest]

Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests [b]that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolved[/b] as a kind of snorkel.

(a)..
(b) that has suggested the elephant descended from an aquatic animal, its trunk originally evolving
(c)suggesting that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal with its trunk originally evolving
(d) to suggest that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal and its trunk originally evolving
(e) to suggest that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal and that its trunk originally evolv

here answer is E . but can someone please clear two doubts.

1) how come "is descended" grammatically correct.
2) how do we know that "its" in E refers to the elephant and not to the "animal".

[Guest]

Can some one please help me understand the above doubts. Thanks.

[Tolga]

We know that "its" refer to elephant because the second "that" makes a sentence parallel to the first sentence and the first sentence object is elephant. The two parallel sentences have similar structures. You probably thought that "its" always refers to the closest noun but it does not work in the parallel structures..

Australian embryologists have found evidence that suggests that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal, and its trunk originally evolved as a kind of snorkel.

(a)..
(b) that has suggested the elephant descended from an aquatic animal, its trunk originally evolving
(c)suggesting that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal with its trunk originally evolving
(d) to suggest that the elephant had descended from an aquatic animal and its trunk originally evolving
(e) to suggest that the elephant is descended from an aquatic animal and that its trunk originally evolv

here answer is E . but can someone please clear two doubts.

1) how come "is descended" grammatically correct.
2) how do we know that "its" in E refers to the elephant and not to the "animal".

[Guest]

Thanks a lot. It helped.

[RonPurewal]

hi - we (staff) can't respond to these questions unless you post a source / attribution. please post the source for this question; thank you.