CRITICAL READING - PASSAGE : SAMPLE QUESTION 1
Answer the three questions given below based on the information presented in the passage
PASSAGE
That well-imagined nightmare in which a bloodthirsty Tyrannosaurus rex is chasing the family car down a lonely road in the red-rock desert as the children scream and the gas gauge hovers on empty and the dinosaur gnashes at the rear bumper is just that: a bad dream. T. rex was a slowpoke. The most feared and revered of the dinosaurs did not have the leg strength to run very fast, if at all, according to a computer model developed by two experts in the mechanical movements of living creatures.
7. The model suggests the Cretaceous landscape was filled with large, lumbering creatures that any human with a fast car or bike or maybe even a quick sprint could outpace. The research brings the discipline of biomechanics to the long and at times contentious debate over just how fast the largest of the largest creatures ever to roam Earth could run. "Large animals need a larger fraction of their body mass as leg muscles in order to do the same things that smaller animals can do, but there is a limit to how large that fraction can be," said John Hutchinson, co-author of the paper and a postdoctoral research fellow in the Biomechanical Engineering Division at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
15. At 13,228 pounds (6,000 kilograms), T. rex was over that limit, he said. So, too, were some of T. rex's potential prey, such as Edmontosaurus (large duckbill) and Triceratops (horned dinosaur). Consequently, Hutchinson and his colleague Mariano Garcia, a mechanical engineer in Ithaca, New York, concluded that the large dinosaurs must have lumbered around at a much slower pace than suggested by some paleontologists and depicted in popular movies. A classic scene in the movie Jurassic Park, for example, shows T. rex chasing a car that's traveling about 45 miles (72 kilometers) an hour. According to Hutchinson and Garcia's model, that's impossible. Eighty-six percent of T. rex's body mass would have to be leg muscle for the behemoth dinosaur to run that fast. No creatures can have most of their body weight in their legs. It doesn't leave enough room for a skeleton, muscles, and other body parts.
25. "An animal cannot be made 100 percent out of leg muscle," said Hutchinson. "In fact, muscle of any kind normally is about one half of an animal's mass, and supportive leg muscle is usually only 5 to 20 percent of an animal's mass."
Question 1
The passage is concerned with the theme that
(a) Movies are correct in portraying that large dinosaurs are very fast
(b) The general perception of large animals or dinosaurs being fast is incorrect
(c) T Rex was the fastest dinosaur that roamed the earth
(d) Jurrassic park was made by a paleontologist
(e) A large dinosaur had more than 50% of its body mass as leg muscle
Question 2
In line 9 the words "Contentious" means
(a) Disputative
(b) Callous
(c) Conclusive
(d) Incorrect
(e) Misleading
Question 3
On the subject of leg muscle the passage says that
(a) An animal can be made of 100% leg muscle
(b) Eighty Six percent of a T Rex's body mass is leg muscle
(c) 5 to 20% of an animal's mass is usually the leg muscle
(d) The larger the animal the smaller the leg muscle component of body mass
(e) The smaller the animal the larger the leg muscle component of body mass
Correct Answer
(1) e
(2) c
(3) c
Explanation to the answers
1. The correct answer is (b). The passage talks about the speed of big animals and this choice brings out the idea correctly.
The passage starts off by saying that movies are wrong about large dinosaurs being very fast animals and this stand rules out option (a) and ( c). Choice (d) is also incorrect because the passage does not talk anything about the makers of Jurrassic Park. The percentage of body mass is not correct in choice (e).
2. The correct choice is (a). "Disputative" comes closest to the meaning of "Contentious" since both indicate a clash or lack of agreement on a topic.
Here there is a debate or argument over the speed of large creatures and the passage does not arrive at any decision. Therefore choice ( c ) will not be correct since there is no conclusion in the passage. "Incorrect" and "Misleading" will not be the correct adjectives since both denote confusion and there is no confusion on the topic of debate. "Callous" means insensitive and has no relation to the given word.
3. The correct choice is ( c). The last line of the passage clearly supports this choice.
Line 25 of the passage rules out option (a). Lines 21, 22, 23 and 24 explain that eighty six percent of the T Rex's body will have to be leg muscle for the animal to run at 45 miles an hour. This is merely a calculation and not the actual case. Choices (d) and (e) can be ruled out since they are baseless and not supported by the passage.
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