This doesn’t capture the author’s focus on a particular phenemonon and the explanation for that phenomenon. The phenomenon is regions with high subduction, but few earthquakes. What explains this? The author focuses on a hypothesis to explain that specific phenomenon. (A) doesn’t capture this. In addition, (A) is unsupported, because the author suggests that direction of plate collision is an important factor in earthquake frequency. Subduction amount alone wouldn’t be a good sign of the number of earthquakes.

This best captures the author’s point, which is that a group of scientists believe the direction of plate collission can explain why there are high subduction zones with few earthquakes. The author presents this hypothesis at the beginning of P2 and describes how it works in the rest of P2.

Not supported, because the hypothesis is that certain zones might have high subduction but few earthquakes due to the direction of the plates when they collide. The hypothesis does not suggest that lack of earthquakes is due to lack of plate collision. Because (C) gets the hypothesis wrong, it can’t be the main point.

Not supported, becaue the hypothesis presented by the author doesn’t abandon the explanation that earthquakes result from subduction. Rather, it adds a complicating factor to this explanation — direction of collection matters. Since (D) gets the hypothesis wrong, it can’t be the main point.

This doesn’t capture the author’s presentation of a hypothesis to explain the regions with high subduction and earthquakes. In addition, the author never suggests that the theory of plate tectonics is threatened; it may be complicated by the addition of direction of plate collision as a factor in earthquakes, but that doesn’t mean the theory is threatened.