Manhattan Prep - 5 Lb. Book of Gre Practice Problems 1,800 Practice Problems in Book and Online (Manhattan Prep 5 lb Series (2019 Edition))-Manhattan Prep (2019)
Questions 67–68 are based on the following reading passage. In 2010, a team of biologists led by Svante Paabo announced
evidence that modern humans
interbred with Neanderthals some 60,000–100,000 years ago. These
researchers compared
the full sequence of Neanderthal DNA to that of five modern humans
from China, France,
sub-Saharan Africa, and Papua New Guinea, and looked for DNA shared
by both Neanderthals
5 and non-African modern humans, but not by sub-Saharan Africans.
Because Neanderthals and
modern humans are known to have diverged hundreds of thousands of
years before modern
humans left Africa, Paabo attributed any such common DNA to
interbreeding in Eurasia.
Paabo’s team announced that the modern humans from China, France,
and Papua New Guinea
all have the same proportion of Neanderthal DNA, and inferred that
interbreeding with
10 Neanderthals must have taken place before the ancestor population of
those Eurasians divided.
Paabo maintained that these two events, the migration of modern
humans out of Africa and the
division of the Eurasian population, mark the interval during which the
interbreeding must have
taken place, and that for roughly forty thousand years of that window,
Neanderthals and modern
humans lived near one another in the Middle East.
15 The team’s conclusions were answered with skepticism on a number
of fronts. Critics
pointed out that an earlier report reached similar conclusions based on
Neanderthal samples later
found to be contaminated with DNA from modern humans.
Paleontologists and archaeologists
charged that the conclusion was unsupported by archaeological
evidence. Further, Paabo’s team
found evidence only of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans, not of
modern human DNA in
20 Neanderthals, but critics claim that interbreeding would result in gene
flow in both directions.
Consider each of the answer choices separately and indicate all that apply.
67. The passage implies that which of the following claims is true?
Modern humans and Neanderthals share a common ancestor.
Modern humans and Neanderthals interbred.
Modern humans and Neanderthals lived near one another
approximately 80,000 years ago.
Consider each of the answer choices separately and indicate all that apply.
68. The passage suggests which of the following is true of Paabo’s critics?
They doubt Paabo’s integrity.
They ignore DNA evidence.
They sometimes appeal to archaeological evidence.