Critical Reasoning (CR) | Paleontologist: It is widely, but falsely, held that life began in the

­Paleontologist: It is widely, but falsely, held that life began in the ocean and did not exist on land until half a billion years ago. Traces of carbon 14 have been found throughout certain 1.2-billion-year-old rocks in North America. Carbon 14 is extracted by plants and microbes from the atmosphere to fuel their chemical reactions, and is then released when the plants and microbes die.

Each of the following, if true, provides additional support for the paleontologist's conclusion EXCEPT:

(A) According to one dating technique, a few fossils of plants that lived on land are more than half a billion years old.

(B) The severity of conditions in the primordial oceans would have made it difficult for life to begin there.

(C) Research suggests that some portions of the 1.2-billion-year-old rocks were at one time submerged in water, though other portions clearly never were.

(D) The 1.2-billion-year-old rocks were formed from soil containing very small amounts of carbon 14 that entered
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Statistics : Posted by Bunuel • on 12 Mar 2024, 05:00 • Replies 0 • Views 45

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