Paleontologists have discovered fossils of centipedes that are 414 million years old. These fossils are at least 20 m...

Julie-V July 18, 2019

(D)

Hi LSAT Max, Can an explanation for (D) be further expanded? In particular, how can we be confident that fossils of the earliest land dwellings can weaken the claim that centipedes are still land dwelling despite some water dwelling animal remains being found with them. Thank you in advance!

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Irina July 21, 2019

@Julie,

Let's briefly look at the passage.

Paleontologists discovered fossils that are at least 20 mln years older than the earliest land-dwelling animals previously identified. They are confident that the discovered centipedes lived on land even they were discovered on a rock that also contained fossilized remains of animals known to be water-dwelling.

We are asked to find a statement that would LEAST support the paleontologist's view. One approach to this question type is to ask ourselves if each of the answer choices would weaken/ strengthen/ or have no impact on the argument. Since this is a "least support" question, we are looking for the answer choice that would have no impact on or weaken the argument.

(D) argues that the earliest land-dwelling animals that had previously been identified were found in rock that did not contain fossilized remains of water-dwelling animals. This is an interesting fact, but it has no impact on the validity of the paleontologist's conclusion as opposed to the rest of the answer choices that do strengthen/ support the conclusion. So to answer your question, the correct answer choice here does not necessarily weaken the claim, rather, it fails to support it.

Let me know if this makes sense.

DevinFuller June 2, 2023

if it fails to support it, im struggling to find out why its a strengthen question? Can you help me with that? Perhaps just misplaced? Or what mistake am I making? Thank you!

Emil-Kunkin June 4, 2023

Oh man this is a weird way of asking the question. This is a bizzaro strengthen question, asking us which would least strengthen. So our job is to find the 4 wrong answers, which do strengthen, and 1 correct answer, which doesnt.