Q11 - Recently discovered fossil evidence

[unprocessed1]

PT 9 LR-A Number 11

I picked D and the answer is E. I can now see why D is wrong, but what in the world does E actually mean?

"is more similar to one rather than the other two of present day phenomena"

What the heck are the other 2 present-day phenomena? Isn't it just comparing the similarities between birds and reptiles?

Could someone please break it down for me, I have no idea what the correct answer refers to, but the other answers are clearly wrong!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Great question. You really have to hand it to the writers of the LSAT for being able to write in the English language and still make their sentences incomprehensible to us!

The argument attempts to establish that dinosaurs are more closely related to birds than to reptiles.

The evidence the argument uses to establish this conclusion is a series of facts that establish that dinosaurs have many characteristics more closely related to birds than to dinosaurs.

We're asked to describe the method of reasoning involved in this argument.

(A) is not bad, but the argument does not attempt to establish that dinosaurs are not related to reptiles but rather to establish that dinosaurs are related to birds.
(B) claims that there is an appeal to a principle in this argument. There is no appeal to a principle but rather a series of pieces of evidence that lead up to a conclusion.
(C) is inaccurate because the claim is not about the present but rather a past phenomenon.
(D) is wrong in that the argument never established that all birds have certain qualities. And the argument never said that everything with those qualities (hollow bones, highly arched mouth roofs, etc...) is a bird.
(E) says that a past phenomenon (dinosaurs) is more similar to one (birds) rather than the other (reptiles) of two present day phenomenon - exactly what the argument does.


Does that help clear things up? Let me know if answer choice (E) is still giving you troubles...

[cyruswhittaker]

I understand if you explain it that way, but to me it is still very ambiguous.

Are we to consider the phenomenon in this case to represent "the occurence of dinosaurs, reptiles, warm-blooded creatures?" This doesn't make sense in the context of "more similair to one." The choice doesn't appear to adequately express the inter-relationships of the passage details.

My issue with this question is that it seems to over-extend the level of interpretation of meaning, when in other questions, this level of interpretation can be the reason for getting a question wrong. To me, choice E is written more like a riddle than a coherent explanation of how the passage proceeds.

Can you please shed some light on this?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

I can see why it feels like that because it feels like we're generalizing from an isolated example. However, what we're really doing is abstracting from single argument.

This sort of process will be typical of procedure questions that ask you to determine how the argument proceeds. Abstract reasoning is tough, but we're trying to describe what is happening in the argument without really addressing the issue of the argument. So, while it might feel like we're over-extending the level of interpretation, we're in fact abstracting an argument structure from within the context of stimulus.

Does that help you see why answer choice (E) doesn't over-extend the interpretation of the argument?

[StratosM31]

(B) claims that there is an appeal to a principle in this argument. There is no appeal to a principle but rather a series of pieces of evidence that lead up to a conclusion.

Why not? Isn't the statement "all fast-breathing animals are warm-blooded" not a general principle, which is then used to draw a conclusion (=doubt whether dinosaurs are more similar to reptiles than to other classes of animals) about a specific case (=dinosaurs)?

I picked B while doing this question and took me a long time to figure out why E is correct, though I am convinced of the latter meanwhile. However, I still need to fully understand what makes B wrong...