PT6.S2.Q12 - By dating fossils of pollen and beetles

richmond

help I said C initially but during BR switched to E. I thought C was wrong because barren conditions doesn't exactly say much about weather conditions and E could explain the discrepancy because if beetles are older they're likely to appear sooner in the record than pollen....

elias.christensen

Edited: Apologies, I misinterpreted this question due to the order of you mentioning blind review—you say you got the correct answer in BR, but aren't sure why? C is a weaker "right" answer (which for an except question, right answers are not what we're looking for) since it's a more general statement of beetles, but it still provides an alternative food source to sustain the beetles before plants recolonized the area. With E, the age of beetle species overall is irrelevant, as we are dealing with plant and beetle species that were already alive at the same time, so this does not provide an explanation for the discrepancy in the fossil record!