2019年9月7日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：The Idea of Continental Drift

2019年9月7日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：The Idea of Continental Drift

For many centuries people thought that Earth was stable and unchanging. But this view could not have been further from the truth. As early as 1596, Dutch mapmaker Abraham Ortelius pondered the fact that the coasts of Africa and Europe would fit closely against the Americas on the other side of the Atlantic and proposed that they might have been joined at one time. Supporting evidence mounted over the centuries. Coal deposits and other geological features were found to be similar in Africa and the Americas, and fossils of the extinct reptile Mesosaurus have been found both along the west coast of southern Africa and the east coast of South America. In 1912 a German scientist called Alfred Wegener collated all this evidence and proposed the idea of continental drift. He suggested that there used to be one supercontinent, which he named Pangaea, and that in geological time this continent had broken apart, its various pieces separating out to their modern-day positions. At first, his ideas were received with skepticism because there was no known mechanism by which continents drift could occur. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that the mechanism was found and his ideas were truly accepted.

1.The word “mounted” in the passage is closest in meaning to

A.appeared

B.became clear

C.was considered

D.grew

2.Why does the author point out that “fossils of the extinct reptile Mesosaurus have been found both along the west coast of southern Africa and the east coast of South America”?

A.To provide an example of the type of evidence Ortelius used to support his theory

B.To explain why the theory of continental drift had become well known in the centuries after Ortelius

C.To imply that Wegener was not a particularly original scientist

D.To provide an example of supporting evidence for the idea that the continents fit together at one time

3.The word “collated” in the passage is closest in meaning to

A.appreciated

B.explained

C.assembled

D.identified

4.Which for the following is mentioned in paragraph 1 as evidence supporting the idea that southern Africa and South America were once joined?

A.The awareness that Earth was no longer stable and unchanging

B.The fact that both southern Africa and South America were once parts of Pangaea

C.The geologic similarity of the opposite coasts of the Atlantic

D.The slow movement of these land areas away from each other

5.According to paragraph 1, which of the following was the most important reason why Wegener’s ideas were accepted?

A.The coasts of Africa and Europe would fit closely with the Americas on the other side of the Atlantic.

B.Similar coal deposits and geological features were found in Africa and the Americas.

C.Fossils of the extinct reptile Mesosaurus were found in southern Africa and eastern South America

D.The mechanism that had caused the pieces of Pangaea to move apart was discovered.

After the Second World War, the use of sonar revolutionized surveys of the sea floor, making accurate mapping of the ocean basins possible. Far from finding merely the flat plains previously imagined, scientists discovered gigantic mountain ranges, isolated seamounts, and deep trenches. The mid-ocean ridge is by far the largest geological feature on Earth, but it had remained unknown and hidden from human observation except for what are in fact glimpses of its mountains that here and there break the sea’s surface as islands. It was the mapping of a great mid-ocean mountain range that, incredibly, extends through all the ocean basins that was the key to understanding continental drift.

。。。。。余下托福阅读真题原文及题目答案省略！

2019年9月7日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：The Idea of Continental Drift完整版下载，10元有偿！