雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：The Burgess Shale fossils

雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：The Burgess Shale fossils

Some discoveries are so unusual it takes decades and sometimes even centuries to understand their full significance. One such discovery is the fossil bed known as the ago. It was discovered in the Canadian Rockies over a century ago and was popularised in 1989 in a book, Wonderful Life, by Stephen Jay Gould an American palaeontologist.

The Burgess Shale fossils were created at a time when the future Canadian land mass was situated near the Earth’s equator. The creatures were preserved when an entire marine ecosystem was buried in mud that eventually hardened and became exposed hundreds of millions of years later in an outcrop of the Rocky Mountains. American palaeontologist Charles Walcott, following reports of fabulous fossils finds by construction workers on Canadian railways who were digging in the mountains in the late 19th century, is said to have tripped over a block of shale in 1909 that revealed the area’s remarkable supply of specimens. It has long been believed that the curious fauna that lived there vanished in a series of extinction because the fossil record ends abruptly, but that no longer appears to be the case.

The Burgess Shale began to form soon after a period of time known as the Cambrian explosion, when most major groups of complex animals arose over a surprisingly short period. Before 560m years ago, most living things were either individual cells or simple colonies of cells. Then, and for reasons that remain a mystery, life massively diversified and became ever more complex as the rate of evolution increased. An unusual feature of the Burgess Shale is that it is one of the earliest fossil beds to contain impressions of the soft body parts alongside the remains of bones and shells, which is highly unusual.

Although the fossil bed was discovered on a mountain, these animals originally existed below an ocean, the bed of which was later pushed up to create the Rockies. Nobody knows exactly why they were so well preserved. One possibility is that the creatures were buried quickly and in conditions that were hostile to the bacteria that cause decomposition of soft body parts.

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QUESTIONS 1 - 5

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN there is no information on this

1  The Burgess Shale became widely known to the public because of Gould’s book.

2  Charles Walcott had to get permission from Canadian authorities to gain access to the fossil site.

3  The Burgess Shale includes impressions of soft and hard body parts.

4  The Burgess Shale creatures were land animals.

5  Researchers now believe that Hallucigenia is unrelated to any modern creature.

QUESTIONS 6 - 9

Complete the notes below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet.

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