Over ten thousand years ago, California's Sonoma Coast lay at the end of a broad coastal terrace. Today, a cluster of mushroomlike outcrops—some nearly sixty feet high—have odd polished areas from ground level to fourteen feet high. These rocks lie near what may have been a terminus for now-extinct megaherbivores (herbivorous mammals exceeding one thousand kilograms) migrating seasonally from valley to coast. The now-submerged coastal savanna attracted mammoths and mastodons from interior pastures, and they may have bathed near the outcrops in what archaeologists suspect is a prehistoric wallow, and then rubbed themselves clean on the outcrops.
Domestic livestock have grazed in the area for over a century, polishing fence posts and rock outcrops to an oily sheen by frequently rubbing against them. This suggests that animals other than megaherbivores could be responsible for the polished areas. However, cows cannot account for rubbings fourteen feet high. Rain and wind weathering has been considered as an explanation, but such weathering would polish the rocks indiscriminately, not just where the rubbing patterns occur.
Recently, researchers analyzed samples of the rubbed rock using microscopes, confirming that the polishing was not caused by weathering. Instead, the scratches worn into the stone closely resemble those on wooden rubbing posts used by zoo elephants to remove grit from their fur after mud baths.
The primary purpose of the passage is to
impartially compare several hypotheses about the cause of a particular phenomenon
call into question a hypothesis that has been proposed as an explanation of a particular phenomenon
explore the origins of a hypothesis that attempts to explain a particular phenomenon
describe the historical development of a hypothesis that attempts to explain a particular phenomenon
give reason to accept a hypothesis that attempts to explain a particular phenomenon
此讲解的内容由AI生成,还未经人工审阅,仅供参考。
正确答案是 B. call into question a hypothesis that has been proposed as an explanation of a particular phenomenon。
答案解释:文章主要让读者思考一些关于某一特定现象的假设,并且质疑有关该假设的解释,因此答案B是正确答案。