The History of Tortoise Reading Answers
The History of Tortoise Reading Answers 14 questions that have to be answered in 20 minutes. The History of Tortoise Reading Answers comprises three types of questions, namely- Write only 3 words, Yes/No/Not given, Finish the flow chart and Choose the correct later. For Yes/No/Not Given questions, candidates must read the passage and understand the statement provided. For completing the summary, candidates need to skim the passage for keywords, understand the concept and choose the appropriate answer. Choosing the correct letter requires candidates to identify the relevance of the statements from within the passage. Candidates must read the IELTS reading passage, identify keywords, and recognize synonyms to answer the question.
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Section 1
Read the Passage to Answer the Following Questions
The History of Tortoise Reading Answers
If you go back far enough, everything lived in the sea. At various points in evolutionary history, enterprising individuals within many different animal groups moved out onto the land, sometimes even to the most parched deserts, taking their own private seawater with them in blood and cellular fluids. In addition to the reptiles, birds, mammals and insects which we see all around us, other groups that have succeeded out of water include scorpions, snails, crustaceans such as woodlice and land crabs, millipedes and centipedes, spiders and various worms. And we mustn’t forget the plants, without whose prior invasion of the land none of the other migrations could have happened.
Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including breathing and reproduction. Nevertheless, a good number of thoroughgoing land animals later turned around, abandoned their hard-earned terrestrial re-tooling, and returned to the water again. Seals have only gone part way back. They show us what the intermediates might have been like, on the way to extreme cases such as whales and dugongs. Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and dugongs, with their close cousins the manatees, ceased to be land creatures altogether and reverted to the full marine habits of
their remote ancestors. They don’t even come ashore to breed. They do, however, still breathe air, having never developed anything equivalent to the gills of their earlier marine incarnation. Turtles went back to the sea a very long time ago and, like all vertebrate returnees to the water, they breathe air. However, they are, in one respect, less fully given back to the water than whales or dugongs, for turtles still lay their eggs on beaches.
There is evidence that all modem turtles are descended from a terrestrial ancestor which lived before most of the dinosaurs. There are two key fossils called Proganochelys quenstedti and Palaeochersis talampayensis dating from early dinosaur times, which appear to be close to the ancestry of all modem turtles and tortoises. You might wonder how we can tell whether fossil animals lived on land or in water, especially if only fragments are found. Sometimes it’s obvious. Ichthyosaurs were reptilian contemporaries of the dinosaurs, with fins and streamlined bodies. The fossils look like dolphins and they surely lived like dolphins, in the water. With turtles it is a little less obvious. One way to tell is by measuring the bones of their forelimbs.
Walter Joyce and Jacques Gauthier, at Yale University, obtained three measurements in these particular bones of 71 species of living turtles and tortoises. They used a kind of triangular graph paper to plot the three measurements against one another. All the land tortoise species formed a tight cluster of points in the upper part of the triangle; all the water turtles cluster in the lower part of the triangular graph. There was no overlap, except when they added some species that spend time both in water and on land. Sure enough, these amphibious species show up on the triangular graph approximately half way between the ‘wet cluster’ of sea turtles and the ‘dry cluster’ of land tortoises. The next step was to determine where the fossils fell. The bones of P quenstedti and JR talampayensis leave us in no doubt. Their points on the graph are right in the thick of the dry cluster. Both these fossils were dry-land tortoises. They come from the era before our turtles returned to the water.
You might think, therefore, that modem land tortoises have probably stayed on land ever since those early terrestrial times, as most mammals did after a few of them went back to the sea. But apparently not. If you draw out the family tree of all modem turtles and tortoises, nearly all the branches are aquatic. Today’s land tortoises constitute a single branch, deeply nested among branches consisting of aquatic turtles. This suggests that modem land tortoises have not stayed on land continuously since the time of P. quenstedti and P talampayensis. Rather, their ancestors were among those who went back to the water, and they then re-emerged back onto the land in (relatively) more recent times.
Tortoises therefore represent a remarkable double return. In common with all mammals, reptiles and birds, their remote ancestors were marine fish and before that various more or less worm-like creatures stretching back, still in the sea, to the primeval bacteria. Later ancestors lived on land and stayed there for a very large number of generations. Later ancestors still evolved back into the water and became sea turtles. And finally they returned yet again to the land as tortoises, some of which now live in the driest of deserts.
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Section 2
Solution and Explanation
Questions 1-4:
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
Question 1: What had to transfer from sea to land before any animals could migrate?
Answer: plants
Supporting Sentence: And we mustn’t forget the plants, without whose prior invasion of the land none of the other migrations could have happened.
Keywords: prior invasion of the land
Keyword Location: Paragraph 1, Line 4
Explanation: In the ancient world, all creatures lived under water. However, before they could move to the land, it was the plants that migrated from the sea.
Question 2: Which TWO processes are mentioned as those in which animals had to make big changes as they moved onto land?
Answer: breathing and reproduction
Supporting Sentence: Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including breathing and reproduction.
Keywords: major redesign, breathing and reproduction
Keyword Location: Paragraph 2, Line 1
Explanation: While the animals moved from the sea to the land, two essential bodily functions required modification and adaptation, namely reproduction and breathing.
Question 3: Which physical feature, possessed by their ancestors, do whales lack?
Answer: gills
Supporting Sentence: They do, however, still breathe air, having never developed anything equivalent to the gills of their earlier marine incarnation.
Keywords: breathe air, gills, marine, incarnation
Keyword Location: Paragraph 2, Line 7
Explanation: The respiratory system of whales did not evolve into gills, unlike most marine animals.
Question 4: Which animals might ichthyosaurs have resembled?
Answer: dolphins
Supporting Sentence: The fossils look like dolphins and they surely lived like dolphins, in the water.
Keywords: lived like dolphins, in the water
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, Line 5
Explanation: After examining the fossils of the ichthyosaurs, it was concluded that they had similar features to that of the dolphins.
Questions 5-7:
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 5-7 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
Question 5: Turtles were among the first group of animals to migrate back to the sea.
Answer: NOT GIVEN
Explanation: The relevant information corresponding to this question is absent in the passage.
Question 6: It is always difficult to determine where an animal lived when its fossilised remains are incomplete.
Answer: FALSE
Supporting Sentence: You might wonder how we can tell whether fossil animals lived on land or in water, especially if only fragments are found.
Keywords: how we can tell
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, Line 3
Explanation: Scientists can determine where an animal lived by examining its fossils even if they were incomplete.
Question 7: The habitat of ichthyosaurs can be determined by the appearance of their fossilised remains.
Answer: TRUE
Supporting Sentence: The fossils look like dolphins and they surely lived like dolphins, in the water.
Keywords: lived like dolphins, in the water
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, Line 5
Explanation: By studying the fossils of the ichthyosaurs, it was determined that they resembled dolphins and were aquatic animals.
Questions 8-13:
Complete the flow-chart below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.
Method of determining where the ancestors of turtles and tortoises come from
Question 8. Step 1: 71 species of living turtles and tortoises were examined and a total of ____
were taken from the bones of their forelimbs.
Answer: 3 measurements
Supporting Sentence: Walter Joyce and Jacques Gauthier, at Yale University, obtained three measurements in these particular bones of 71 species of living turtles and tortoises.
Keyword: obtained three measurements
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, Line 1
Explanation: Researchers at Yale University studied 71 species of tortoises and turtles and took three bone measurements.
Question 9. Step 2: The data was recorded on a __________ (necessary for comparing the information).
Answer: (triangular) graph
Supporting Sentence: They used a kind of triangular graph paper to plot the three measurements against one another.
Keyword: triangular graph paper
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, Line 2
Explanation: After the researchers at Yale University took three bone measurements from 71 species of tortoises and turtles, they plotted the same on a triangular graph paper.
Question 10. Outcome: Land tortoises were represented by a dense ____________ of points towards the top.
Answer: cluster Sea turtles were grouped together in the bottom part.
Supporting Sentence: All the land tortoise species formed a tight cluster of points in the upper part of the triangle; all the water turtles cluster in the lower part of the triangular graph.
Keyword: a tight cluster of points in the upper part
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, Line 3
Explanation: After plotting on triangle graph paper, it was seen that all kinds of land tortoises were situated on the upper part of the graph in a close-knit group.
Question 11. Step 3: The same data was collected from some living _________ species and added to the other results.
Answer: amphibious
Supporting Sentence: Sure enough, these amphibious species show up on the triangular graph approximately halfway between the ‘wet cluster of sea turtles and the ‘dry cluster’ of land tortoises.
Keyword: amphibious species
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, Line 5
Explanation: Data about amphibious species, who live on land as well as in water, was also collected and added to the triangular graph.
Question 12. Outcome: The points for these species turned out to be positioned about __________________
up the triangle between the land tortoises and the sea turtles.
Answer: half way
Supporting Sentence: Sure enough, these amphibious species show up on the triangular graph approximately halfway between the ‘wet cluster of sea turtles and the ‘dry cluster’ of land tortoises.
Keyword: halfway between the ‘wet cluster of sea turtles and the ‘dry cluster’ of land tortoises
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, Line 5
Explanation: The data collected on the amphibious species was placed between the data on land tortoises and water tortoises.
Question 13.Step 4: Bones of P quenstedti and P. talampayensis were examined in a similar way and the results added. Outcome: The position of the points indicated that both these ancient creatures were _____________________
Answer: dry-land tortoises
Supporting Sentence: Both these fossils were dry-land tortoises.
Keywords: fossils, dry-land tortoises
Keyword Location: Paragraph 4, Line 9
Explanation: After studying the fossils of P.quenstedti and P. talampayensis, it was discovered that these were species of land tortoises.
Questions 14:
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in box 14 on your answer sheet.
According to the writer, the most significant thing about tortoises is that
- they are able to adapt to life in extremely dry environments.
- their original life form was a kind of primeval bacteria.
- they have so much in common with sea turtles.
- they have made the transition from sea to land more than once.
Answer: D
Supporting Sentence: Tortoises, therefore, represent a remarkable double return.
Keyword: remarkable double return
Keyword Location: Paragraph 6, Line 1
Explanation: Tortoises mark that they have migrated from water to land and vice versa, more than once.
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