LSAT 148 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q3

LR Question 3 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Researcher: Dinosaur fossils come in various forms…

QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen

CONCLUSION: It’s not surprising we usually don’t find dinosaur bones near dinosaur tracks in mud flats.

REASONING: Scavengers would have looked for food in mud flats.

ANALYSIS: This argument is missing something. It’s a bit of a paradox: we have found dinosaur tracks and dinosaur bones, but the bones are not normally near tracks.

Why? The author says scavengers are the reason, but the author doesn’t say why scavengers are important.

The question you must ask yourself is: why would scavengers prevent us finding dinosaur bones near dinosaur tracks? I didn’t prephrase this one, but because I was thinking of that question, I immediately recognized the answer.

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1. Who cares? We’re trying to explain a fact about mud flats. It doesn’t matter if dinosaur tracks are found in mountains, underwater, on the moon, etc.
2. CORRECT. This explains it. The dinosaur bodies were originally beside their tracks in mud flats. But scavengers dragged the body away from the tracks, so the bones ended up in another location.
3. This is just a fact. It doesn’t explain why the bones researchers have found are not near dinosaur tracks.
4. This is like A. It’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if we found dinosaur eggs, dinosaur scales, etc. We’re trying to explain the relationship between dinosaur tracks and bones. This vague reference to “other fossils” adds nothing.
5. You might have thought this meant that bones would be destroyed before they mineralized. But that’s a stretch. Especially since this answer is very weak evidence. It just says bones take “longer” to mineralize. That could mean one second longer – you have to take LSAT answers at their weakest on strengthen questions.