PT6.S2.Q12-- Help -- explain the discrepancy question

Darklord

Hi,

So on this question I was stuck between C and D (because each of these answer choices only talked about one of the two things: beetles or plants, but not how they compared to one another). However, the right answer happened to be E (which totally surprised me because "many" warm weather plants could include the ones that the stimulus is talking about, and if beetles were much older than these plants, this could explain why they came up earlier on the fossil record.
Can anyone help explain why the answer is E (and not C and D)?

Thanks!

FindingSage

I actually picked E right away because it felt like it did nothing to provide an explaination. The first part of answer choice E, which tells us that bettles are among the oldest insects, just felt like a fact. The second part which says that bettles are older than many warm weather plants feels like a trap because it is baiting you to believe that you just read that bettles are older than warm weather plants. But the word many could just mean some. And if you look at the word many as just meaning some, which could could potentially only mean a few, than you can look at answer choice E and say so what? Just becuase there are bettles that are older than some warm weather plants doesn't mean that you have any idea how many of these plants that there are or even that you are referring to the same plants which would have inhabitated the area that is referenced in the stimulus.
In contrast, answer choice C explains why you would have seen evidence of beetles in the area long before pollen, because they can survive in places where it is very barren, which is what you would expect to see following the glacier melting.

Like C, answer choice D appears to only be referring to pollen but actually it is explaining why you would find evidence of the bettles but you would mistake the lack of pollen as being evidence that there is no new pollen growth.

Darklord

Thank you! This really helped @FindingSage!