gre考试阅读真题解析(B)_GRE阅读

gre考试阅读真题解析(B)

　　 History should be concerned with describing those aspects of the past that differ most from those of the present.

　　 History should be examined for the lessons it can provide in understanding current problems.

　　23. The primary function of the passage as a whole is to

　　 compare two competing models

　　 analyze a difficult theory

　　 present new evidence for a theory

　　 correct an erroneous belief by describing its origins

　　 resolve a long-standing theoretical controversy

　　Biologists have long maintained that two groups of pinnipeds , sea lions and walruses, are descended from a terrestrial bearlike animal, whereas the remaining group, seals, shares an ancestor with weasels. But the recent discovery of detailed similarities in the skeletal structure of the flippers in all three groups undermines the attempt to explain away superficial resemblance as due to convergent evolution the independent development of similarities between unrelated groups in response to similar environmental pressures. Flippers may indeed be a necessary response to aquatic life; turtles, whales, and dugongs that has a bilobed tail and in the male upper incisors altered into short tusks, is related to the manatee, and inhabits warm coastal regions) also have them. But the common detailed design found among the pinnipeds probably indicates a common ancestor. Moreover, walruses and seals drive themselves through the water with thrusts of their hind flippers, but sea lions use their front flippers. If anatomical similarity in the flippers resulted from similar environmental pressures, as posited by the convergent evolution theory, one would expect walruses and seals, but not seals and sea lions, to have similar flippers.