2020年11月22日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Did Sauropods Live in Swamps?

2020年11月22日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Did Sauropods Live in Swamps?

The sauropod dinosaurs were the largest animals ever to live on land. They had a long neck and tail, a roundish body, and four stout legs. For many years, it was widely believed they must have spent most of their time in swamps, where their great bulk was buoyed up by water. In this way, they would have remained deeply submerged, breathing with only their nostrils poking out of the water. This idea may have originated as a consequence of the early nineteenth-century paleontologist R. Owen’s mistaken notion of the sauropod Cetiosaurus, which he thought to be an exceedingly large marine crocodile. It was later argued that sauropods were too big and heavy to have lived on land; that their legs would not have supported them; and that, like a whale, they needed the buoyancy of water to permit them to breathe. It was said that the long tails were used for swimming. Finally, it was suggested that the nostrils at the top of the skull were like the snorkel on a submarine, allowing the animal to breathe while remaining fully submerged (and presumably hidden and protected). Although as early as 1904 E.S. Riggs argued coherently that these animals were terrestrial, sauropods were persistently viewed as having a fully aquatic existence, with their bodies submerged 6 meters or more below the surface of the water and their necks craning to keep the nostrils just above the water’s surface.

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

A) partially

B) sufficiently

C) safely

D) most likely

2. The phrase “were persistently viewed” in the passage is closest in meaning to

A) were sometimes viewed

B) continued to be viewed

C) were increasingly viewed

D) began to be viewed

3. According to paragraph 1, all of the following were generally believed about sauropods EXCEPT:

A) Their bodies were too heavy for their legs to support them on dry land.

B) Their long tails helped them to swim.

C) They used their legs for support only when they were almost entirely submerged.

D) They could breathe with only their nostrils above water.

4. According to paragraph 1, in 1904 E. S. Riggs argued that sauropods

A) had a fully aquatic existence

B) kept their nostrils out of the water at all times

C) submerged themselves only when hiding

D) lived on land rather than in the water

The idea of aquatic sauropods began unraveling in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s and 70s. In 1951, K. A. Kermack examined the consequences of water pressure on a submerged sauropod. The pressure on a body increases with the depth at which it is submerged. ¢ If a sauropod was fully submerged, the chest – and hence the lungs – would have been under some 6 meters of water. ¢ The pressure at this depth is nearly twice what it is at the surface and would tend to collapse the chest, pushing whatever air was in the lungs up and out of the body. ¢ How a breath might be taken is hard to say, since the sauropod’s lungs would have to be expanded underwater, pushing outward against considerable pressure, a pressure opposing taking a breath that is greater than that encountered by any vertebrate living today. ¢ Unless sauropods had exceedingly powerful chest muscles, these animals certainly would not have been able to breathe in. For this reason, Kermack argued, it is perhaps better to envision sauropods as terrestrial animals.

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