Read the following passages and then choose the best answer for each question. 

Passage 1 

The first birds appeared during late Jurassic times. These birds are known from  four very good skeletons, two incomplete skeletons, and an isolated feather, all from  the Solnhofen limestone of Bavaria, Germany. This fine-grained rock, which is  extensively quarried for lithographic stone, was evidently deposited in a shallow  coral lagoon of a tropical sea, and flying vertebrates occasionally fell into the water  and were buried by the fine limy mud, to be preserved  with remarkable detail In this  way, the late Jurassic bird skeletons, which have been named Archaeopteryx, were fossilized. And not only were the bones preserved in these skeletons, but so also were imprints of the feathers. If the indications of feathers had not been preserved in association with Archaeopteryx, it is likely that these fossils would have been classified among the dinosaurs, for they show numerous theropod characteristics.

Archaeopteryx were animals about the size of a crow, with an archeosaurian type of skull, a long neck, a compact body balanced on a pair of strong hind limbs, and a  long tail. The forelimbs were enlarged and obviously functioned as wings.

Modern birds, who are the descendants of these early birds, are highly organized animals, with a constant body temperature and a very high rate of metabolism. In addition, they are remarkable for having evolved extraordinarily complex behavior patterns such as those of nesting and song, and the habit among many species of making long migrations from one continent to another and back each year.

Most birds also have very strong legs, which allows them to run or walk on the ground as well as to fly in the air. Indeed, some of the water birds, such as ducks and geese, have the distinction of being able to move around proficiently in the water, on land, and in the air, a range in natural locomotor ability that has never been attained  by any other vertebrate.

1. According to the author, all of-the following evidence relating to the first birds was found EXCEPT

2. The word “preserved” in line 8 is closest in meaning to

3. It can be inferred from the passage that the Archaeopteryx were classified as birds on the basis of

4. The word “they” in line 11 refers to

5. Why does the author mention “a crow” in line 12?

6. It can be inferred from the passage that theropods were

7. The word “constant” in line 16 is closest in meaning to

8. The author mentions all of the following as examples of complex behavior patterns evolved by birds EXCEPT

9. The word “attained” in line 24 is closest in meaning to

 Passage 22

Some animal behaviorists argue that certain animals can remember past events, anticipate future ones, make plans and choices, and coordinate activities within a group. These scientists, however, are cautious about the extent to which animals can be credited with conscious processing.

 Explanations of animal behavior that leave out any sort of consciousness at all and ascribe actions entirely to instinct leave many questions unanswered. One example of such unexplained behavior: Honeybees communicate the sources of nectar to one another by doing a dance in a figure-eight pattern. The orientation of the dance conveys the position of the food relative to the sun’s position in the sky, and the speed of the dance tells how far the food source is from the hive. Most researchers assume that the ability to perform and encode the dance is innate and shows no special intelligence. But in one study, when experimenters kept changing the site of the food source, each time moving the food 25 percent farther from the previous site, foraging honeybees began to anticipate where the food source would appear next. When the researchers arrived at the new location, they would find the bees circling the spot, waiting for their food. No one has yet  explained how bees, whose brains weigh four ten-thousandths of an ounce, could have inferred the location of the new site.

Other behaviors that may indicate some cognition include tool use. Many animals, like the otter who uses a stone to crack mussel shells, are capable of using objects in the natural environment as rudimentary tools. One researcher has found that mother chimpanzees occasionally show their young how to use tools to open hard nuts. In one study, chimpanzees compared two pairs of food wells containing chocolate chips. One pair might contain, say, five chips and three chips, the other our chips and three chips. Allowed to choose which pair they wanted, the chimpanzees almost always chose the one with the higher total, showing some sort of summing ability. Other chimpanzees have learned to use numerals to label quantities of items and do simple sums.

1. What does the passage mainly discuss?

2. Which of the following is NOT discussed as an ability animals are thought to have?

3. What is the purpose of the honeybee dance?

5. What did researchers discover in the study of honeybees discussed in paragraph 2?

6. It can be inferred from the passage that brain size is assumed to

7. Why are otters and mussel shells included in the discussion in paragraph 3?

8. The word “rudimentary” in line 21 is closest in meaning to

9. It can be inferred from the statement about mother chimpanzees and their young (lines 21-23) that young chimpanzees have difficulty

10. The phrase “the one” in line 26 refers to the

11. Scientists concluded from the experiment with chimpanzees and chocolate chips that chimpanzees

Passage 23

Scientists have discovered that for the last 160,000 years, at least, there has been a consistent relationship between the amount of carbon dioxide in the air and the average temperature of the planet. The importance of carbon dioxide in regulating the Earth’s temperature was confirmed by scientists working in eastern Antarctica. Drilling down into a glacier, they extracted a mile-long cylinder of ice from the hole. The glacier had formed as layer upon layer of snow accumulated  year after year. Thus drilling into the ice was tantamount  to drilling back through time.

The deepest sections of the core are composed of water that fell as snow 160,000 years ago. Scientists in Grenoble, France, fractured portions of the core and measured the composition of ancient air released from bubbles in the ice. Instruments were used to measure the ratio of certain isotopes in the frozen water to get an idea of the prevailing atmospheric temperature at the time when that particular bit of water became locked in the glacier.

The result is a remarkable  unbroken record of temperature and of atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. Almost every time the chill of an ice age descended on the planet, carbon dioxide levels dropped. When the global temperature dropped 9°F (5 °C), carbon dioxide levels dropped to 190 parts per million or so. Generally, as each ice age ended and the Earth basked in a warm interglacial period, carbon dioxide levels were around 280 parts per million. Through the 160,000 years of that ice record, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere fluctuated between 190 and 280 parts per million, but never rose much higher-until the Industrial Revolution beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing today.

There is indirect evidence that the link between carbon dioxide levels and global temperature change goes back much further than the glacial record. Carbondioxide levels may have been much greater than the current concentration during the Carboniferous period, 360 to 285 million years ago. The period was named for a profusion of plant life whose buried remains produced a large fraction of the coal deposits that are being brought to the surface and burned today.

1. Which of the following does the passage mainly discuss?

2. The word “accumulated” in line 6 is closest in meaning to

3. According to the passage, the drilling of the glacier in eastern Antarctica was important because it

4. The phrase “tantamount to” in line 7 is closest in meaning to

5. According to the passage, scientists used isotopes from the water of the ice core to determine which of following?

6. The word “remarkable” in line 14 is closest in meaning to

7. The word “link” in line 23 is closest in meaning to

8. The passage implies that the warmest temperatures among the periods mentioned occurred

9. According to the passage, the Carboniferous period was characterized by

10. The passage explains the origin of which of the following terms?

  Passage 24

Cities develop as a result of functions that they can perform. Some functions result directly from the ingenuity of the citizenry, but most functions result from the needs of  the local area and of the surrounding hinterland (the region that supplies goods to the city and to which the city furnishes services and other goods). Geographers often make  a distinction between the situation and the site of a city. Situation refers to the general position in relation to the surrounding region, whereas site involves physical  characteristics of the specific location. Situation is normally much more important to  the continuing prosperity of a city. if a city is well situated in regard to its hinterland, its development is much more likely to continue. Chicago, for example, possesses an almost  unparalleled situation: it is located at the southern end of a huge lake that forces east-west transportation lines to be compressed into its vicinity, and at a meeting of significant  land  and water transport routes. It also overlooks what is one of the world’s finest large  farming regions. These factors ensured that Chicago would become a great city regardless  of the disadvantageous characteristics of the available site, such as being prone to flooding during thunderstorm activity.

Similarly, it can be argued that much of New York City’s importance stems from its  early and continuing advantage of situation. Philadelphia and Boston both originated at  about the same time as New York and shared New York’s location at the western end of  one of the world’s most important oceanic trade routes, but only New York  possesses an easy-access functional connection (the Hudson-Mohawk lowland) to the vast Midwestern

hinterland. This account does not alone explain New York’s primacy, but it does include  several important factors. Among the many aspects of situation that help to explain why  some cities grow and others do not, original location on a navigable waterway seems  particularly applicable. Of course, such characteristic  as slope, drainage, power resources, river crossings, coastal shapes, and other physical characteristics help to determine city location, but such factors are normally more significant in early stages of city development than later.

1. What does the passage mainly discuss?

2. The word “ingenuity” in line 2 is closest in meaning to

3. The passage suggests that a geographer would consider a city’s soil type part of its

4. According to the passage, a city’s situation is more important than its site in regard to the city’s.

5. The author mentions each of the following as an advantage of Chicago’s location EXCEPT its.

6. The word “characteristics” in line 14 is closest in meaning to

7. The primary purpose of paragraph 1 is to

8. According to the passage, Philadelphia and Boston are similar to New York City in

9. The word “functional” in line 20 is closest in meaning to

10. The word “it”  in line 21 refers to

11. The word “significant”  in line 26 is closest in meaning to