摘要:新托福阅读能力是考试主办方重点考察的方向之一。除了在托福阅读部分考察外,在其他单项中也会出题考察。因此这需要考生们学习更多实用技巧来应对考试的挑战,大家在平时一定要多加练习,在下文中小编整理了托福阅读常考话题:恐龙大灭绝,一起来看看吧!
Passage 3
Determining Dinosaur Diet
Determining what extinct dinosaurs ate is difficult, but we can infer some aspects of their dietary preferences. Traditionally, this information has been derived from direct evidence, such as stomach contents, and indirect evidence, such as establishing a correlation between particular body characteristics and diets of living animals and then inferring habits for dinosaurs.
Animals such as house cats and dogs have large, stabbing canine teeth at the front of the mouth and smaller, equally sharp teeth farther back in their jaws. Many of these animals are also armed with sharp claws. The advantage of teeth and claws as predatory tools is obvious. Now consider animals like cows, horses, rabbits, and mice. These animals have flat teeth at the back of the jaw that are analogous to and have the same function as grindstones. Unlike the meat-slicing and stabbing teeth of carnivores, the teeth of these animals grind and shred plant material before digestion.
More clues exist in other parts of the skull. The jaw joint of carnivores such as dogs and cats has the mechanical advantage of being at the same level as the tooth row, allowing the jaws to close with tremendous speed and forcing the upper teeth to occlude against the lower teeth with great precision. In herbivorous animals, rapid jaw closure is less important. Because the flat teeth of herbivores work like grindstones, however, the jaws mush move both side to side and front to back. The jaw joints of many advanced herbivores, such as cows, lie at a different level than the tooth row, allowing transverse tearing, shredding, and compression of plant material. If we extend such observations to extinct dinosaurs, we can infer dietary preferences (such as carnivory and herbivory), even though we cannot determine the exact diet. The duck-billed dinosaurs known as hadrosaurs are a good example of a group whose jaw joint is below the level of the tooth row, which probably helped them grind up tough, fibrous vegetation.
Paleontologists would like to be much more specific about a dinosaur's diet than simply differentiating carnivore from herbivore. This finer level of resolution requires direct fossil evidence of dinosaur meals. Stomach contents are only rarely preserved, but when present, allow us to determine exactly what these animals were eating.
In the stomach contents of specimens of Coelophysis (a small, long-necked dinosaur) are bones from juvenile animals of the same species. At one time, these were thought to represent embryonic animals, suggesting that this small dinosaur gave birth to live young rather than laying eggs. Further research indicated that the small dinosaurs were too large and too well developed to be prehatchling young. In addition, the juveniles inside the body cavity were of different sizes. All the evidence points to the conclusion that these are the remains of prey items and that, as an adult, Coelophysis was at least in part a cannibal.
Fossilized stomach contents are not restricted to carnivorous dinosaurs. In a few rare cases, most of them “mummies” (unusually well preserved specimens), fossilized plant remains have been found inside the body cavity of hadrosaurs. Some paleontologists have argued that these represent stream accumulations rather than final meals. The best known of these cases is the second Edmontosaurus mummy collected by the Sternbergs. In the chest cavity of this specimen, which is housed in the Senckenberg Museum in Germany, are the fossil remains of conifer needles, twigs, seeds, and fruits. Similar finds in Corythosaurus specimens from Alberta, Canada, have also been reported, indicating that at least two kinds of Late Cretaceous hadrosaurs fed on the sorts of tress that are common in today's boreal woodlands.
A second form of direct evidence comes from coprolites (fossilized bodily waste). Several dinosaur fossil localities preserve coprolites. Coprolites yield unequivocal evidence about the dietary habits of dinosaurs. Many parts of plants and animals are extremely resistant to the digestive systems of animals and pass completely through the body with little or no alteration. Study of coprolites has indicated that the diets of some herbivorous dinosaurs were relatively diverse, while other dinosaurs appear to have been specialists, feeding on particular types of plants. The problem with inferring diets from coprolites is the difficulty in accurately associating a particular coprolite with a specific dinosaur.
【段落主旨】
Paragraph 1:
Paragraph 2:
Paragraph 3:
Paragraph 4:
Paragraph 5:
Paragraph 6:
Paragraph 7:
【生词摘录】
免费领取最新剑桥雅思、TPO、SAT真题、百人留学备考群,名师答疑,助教监督,分享最新资讯,领取独家资料。
方法1:扫码添加新航道老师
微信号:shnc_2018
方法2:留下表单信息,老师会及时与您联系
课程名称 | 班级人数 | 课时 | 学费 | 报名 |
---|---|---|---|---|
托福入门段(A段)6-10人走读班 | 6-10人 | 80课时 | ¥15800 | 在线咨询 |
托福强化段(C段)6-10人班 | 6-10人 | 96课时 | ¥30800 | 在线咨询 |
托福全程段(A+B+C段)6-10人班 | 6-10人 | 192课时 | ¥55800 | 在线咨询 |
托福特训班(4周,走读) | 8-10人 | 192 | ¥34800 | 在线咨询 |
托福特训班(6周,走读) | 8-10人 | 288 | ¥49800 | 在线咨询 |
课程名称 | 班级人数 | 课时 | 学费 | 报名 |
---|---|---|---|---|
托福精讲段(B段)20-30人班 | 20-30人 | 96课时 | ¥8800 | 在线咨询 |
托福强化段(C段)20-30人班 | 20-30人 | 96课时 | ¥7800 | 在线咨询 |
托福全程段(A+B+C段)20-30人班 | 20-30人 | 192课时 | ¥13800 | 在线咨询 |
课程名称 | 班级人数 | 课时 | 学费 | 报名 |
---|---|---|---|---|
托福入门段(A段)(6-10人,住宿) | 6-10人 | 80课时 | ¥17800 | 在线咨询 |
托福强化段(C段)6-10人班住宿 | 152课时 | ¥33800 | 在线咨询 | |
托福全程班(A+B+C段)6-10人班住宿 | 6-10人 | 304课时 | ¥60800 | 在线咨询 |
托福长线班(6-10人,住宿) | 6-10人 | 272课时 | ¥77800 | 在线咨询 |
托福词汇语法住宿班(A段)(6-10人) | 6-10人 | 48课时 | ¥8800 | 在线咨询 |
课程名称 | 班级人数 | 课时 | 学费 | 报名 |
---|---|---|---|---|
托福全程段(A+B+C段)20-30人班住宿 | 20-30人 | 192课时 | ¥15800 | 在线咨询 |
托福强化段(C段)20-30人班住宿 | 20-30人 | 96课时 | ¥8800 | 在线咨询 |
托福精讲段(B段)20-30人班住宿 | 20-30人 | 96课时 | ¥9800 | 在线咨询 |
课程名称 | 班级人数 | 课时 | 学费 | 报名 |
---|---|---|---|---|
托福一对一 | 1 | 按需定制 | ¥980元 | 在线咨询 |
托福免费试听课 | ¥0元 | 在线咨询 |
课程名称 | 班级人数 | 课时 | 学费 | 报名 |
---|---|---|---|---|
小托福课程 | 6人 | 54小时 | ¥20800 | 在线咨询 |
小托福考试技巧进阶课程 | 30 | ¥9800 | 在线咨询 |
免责声明
1、如转载本网原创文章,请表明出处;
2、本网转载媒体稿件旨在传播更多有益信息,并不代表同意该观点,本网不承担稿件侵权行为的连带责任;
3、如本网转载稿、资料分享涉及版权等问题,请作者见稿后速与新航道联系(电话:021-64380066),我们会第一时间删除。
地址:徐汇区文定路209号宝地文定商务中心1楼
乘车路线:地铁1/4号线上海体育馆、3/9号线宜山路站、11号线上海游泳馆站
总部地址:北京市海淀区中关村大街28-1号6层601 集团客服电话:400-097-9266 总部:北京新航道教育文化发展有限责任公司
Copyright © www.xhd.cn All Rights Reserved 京ICP备05069206