Researcher: Dinosaurs lack turbinates—nasal cavity bone structures in warm-blooded species that minimize water loss d...

Victoria on November 22, 2019

Hi @cjahangiri

When trying to determine what role a statement plays in a passage, make sure you look for indicator words such as "because," "since," and "for" which introduce premises and "therefore" and "however" for conclusions.

If you think that you have found the conclusion, make sure to double check that it can be supported by another part of the passage (i.e. a premise). If it can't, it likely supports the passage's main or intermediate conclusions.

Here, we need to figure out what role the final sentence of the passage - "only warm-blooded animals could survive such temperatures" - plays in the researcher's argument.

Answer E says that it is a conclusion supported by the premise that some dinosaur species lived in Australia and Alaska where temperatures drop below freezing.

If we isolate the final sentence, the only question that is raised is "what are the temperatures that only warm-blooded animals could survive in?" While we do learn that the passage is referring to Australia and Alaska from the previous sentence, it is not required to support the final claim of the passage.

Rather, the conclusion can be found in the second-last sentence: the paleo biologists must be mistaken in their claim that all dinosaurs were cold-blooded. Why? Because dinosaurs were found in Australia and Alaska where temperatures drop to a point where only warm-blooded animals could survive them.

In this way, the final sentence is a premise supporting the main conclusion of the passage, making B the correct answer.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any further questions.

cjahangiri on November 22, 2019

This was a perfect explanation, thanks so much!

Ravi on November 29, 2019

@cjahangiri, let us know if you have any other questions!

ruchitaj on August 20, 2020

How do we know that its not the intermediate conclusion?

Victoria on August 25, 2020

Hi @ruchitaj,

Happy to help!

There are two reasons why this claim is not the intermediate conclusion:

1) It is a standalone fact which does not require any supporting information to be true.

2) The only answer choice which suggests that the claim (Claim 1) could be the intermediate conclusion states that it is supported by the claim that some dinosaur species lived in Australia and Alaska (Claim 2). Claim 1 is not supported by Claim 2; rather, both claims support the conclusion that the paleobiologists are mistaken.

Claim: Some paleobiologists believe that all dinosaurs were cold-blooded.
Claim 2: Some dinosaurs lived where temperatures drop below freezing.
Claim 1: Only warm-blooded animals can survive temperatures below freezing.

Conclusion: Therefore, the paleobiologists must be mistaken.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any further questions.