# PTE Reading MCM #9: Evolutionary Origins of...

Reading: Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers #9 - Level 2 - Feeds Reading

> Read the text and answer the question by choosing all the options that are correct. More than one answer is correct, and a wrong choice costs a point.

It should be obvious that cetaceans--whales, porpoises, and dolphins--are mammals. They breathe through lungs, not through gills, and give birth to live young. Their streamlined bodies, the absence of hind legs, and the presence of a fluke1 and blowhole2 cannot disguise their affinities with land-dwelling mammals. However, unlike the cases of sea otters and pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses, whose limbs are functional both on land and at sea), it is not easy to envision what the first whales looked like. Extinct but already fully marine cetaceans are known from the fossil record. How was the gap between a walking mammal and a swimming whale bridged? Missing until recently were fossils clearly intermediate, or transitional, between land mammals and cetaceans.

Which of the following can be inferred from the paragraph about early sea otters?

- It is not difficult to imagine what they looked like.
- There were great numbers of them.
- They lived in the sea and land.
- They did not leave many fossil remains.

## Answer

- It is not difficult to imagine what they looked like.
- They lived in the sea and land.

## Explanation

The correct choices accurately reflect the text's discussion on the difficulty of visualizing early whale forms and the distinction between semi-aquatic and fully aquatic mammals.

## Hints

- Focus on the sentences describing the physical traits of whales and their evolutionary history.
- Look for phrases that contrast modern whales with their ancestors or other marine species.

[Practise this question with the exam timer](https://testmigo.com/pte/practice/reading-multiple-choice-multiple-answers/evolutionary-origins-of-cetaceans) - [All Reading: Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers questions](https://testmigo.com/pte/practice/reading-multiple-choice-multiple-answers)