2015年6月13日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Gondwana

2015年6月13日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Gondwana

1. Among the enduring legacies of the famous European voyages of discovery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are a collection and scientific description of plants and animals from around the world. These form the nucleus of the great collections in modern museums and have been responsible for a radical revision in the way that we perceive the structure of Earth and the forces that have shaped its surface over time. As the fauna and flora from far-flung lands came to be described and incorporated into the body of knowledge about the world, it was noted that there were some striking similarities among living and extinct organisms of the Southern Hemisphere continents. In the 1840s, the English botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker commented on the remarkable fact that the flora of South America and Oceania (mainly Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and the Malay Archipelago) shared seven families of flowering plants and 48 genera that were not to be found elsewhere. Later, similar patterns were observed in other groups of plants and animals, such as liverworts, lichens, mayflies, midges, and various types of vertebrates. How could these similarities be explained in view of the enormous stretches of ocean that separate the Southern Hemisphere continents today One idea developed during the late nineteenth century was that there existed in the remote geological past a vast Southern Hemisphere continentin other words, that the modern continents of the Southern Hemisphere were somehow connected long ago, thus explaining the similarities in fauna and flora.The name given to this hypothetical continent was Gondwana.

2. One of the most distinctive fossil plants of this hypothetical continent is called Glossopteris. When first described by the French paleobotanist Adolphe Brongniart in 1828, Glossopteris was thought to be a type of fern. Now, however, it is known to be a woody seed-bearing shrub or tree. The trunks of Glossopteris could reach 4 meters in height. Seeds and pollen-containing organs were borne in clusters at the tips of slender stalks attached to the leaves, but some species may have borne seeds in cones. It is thought that Glossopteris lived in a seasonal environment, and this is consistent with the occurrence of growth rings in the wood. Also, there is evidence that the plant was deciduous (that is, that it shed its leaves annually at the end of the growing season) and that it grew under very wet soil conditions, like the modern swamp cypress. The large leaves of Glossopteriswhich exceeded 30 centimeters in lengthare common fossils in rocks of the Permian period (299¨C251 million years ago) in India, Africa, South America, Australia, and Antarctica.

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托福阅读真题题目：

1..The word enduring in the passage is closest in meaning to

A. exciting

B. lasting

C. unexpected

D. well-known

2..Why does the author mention the enormous stretches of ocean that separate the Southern Hemisphere continents today

A. To emphasize the importance of the famous European voyages of discovery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

B. To suggest a reason why so many genera of flowering plants are found only in the Southern Hemisphere

C. To question the accuracy of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker's observations about the similarities between the flora of Australia and that of South America

D. To explain why the similarities between flora pointed out by Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker seemed so remarkable

3..Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.

A. The similarities in fauna and flora across Southern Hemisphere continents were explained in the late nineteenth century.

B. In the nineteenth century it was discovered that the Southern Hemisphere continents contain fauna and flora that are highly similar.

C. In the nineteenth century, it was suggested that the modern continents of the Southern Hemisphere were once connected.

D. The fauna and flora of the modern continents of the Southern Hemisphere were found to be very similar in the late nineteenth century.

4..In paragraph 2, the author discusses Glossopteris in order to

A. provide an example of a fossil species that was attributed to Gondwana on the basis of its wide distribution

B. explain why the descriptions of ancient plants made by Adolphe Brongniart were not completely accurate

C. establish the importance of nineteenth-century paleobotanist Adolphe Brongniart

D. show that similarities among flora in the Southern Hemisphere continents were not limited to flowering plants

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