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Hungry prehistoric hunters, not climate change, drove elephants to extinctio

游客2023-07-16  68
问题     Hungry prehistoric hunters, not climate change, drove elephants to extinction during the Pleistocene era (更新世), new research suggests.
    At least 12 kinds of elephants【1】to wander about the African, Eurasian, and American continents.
    Today, only two【2】of elephants are left in South Asia and Africa. One theory for this dramatic death holds that rapid climate shifts at the end of the most recent major ice age, some 10,000 years ago,【3】vegetation and broke up habitats (栖息地), causing the death of those unable to adapt to the new conditions. Another【4】blames prehistoric humans, whose improved weapons and hunting techniques allowed them to wipe out whole herds of elephants.
    To help【5】the debate, archaeologist Todd Surovell of the University of Wyoming, and colleagues tested two assumptions. If humans caused the elephant extinction, Surovell reasoned, the timing of the die-off in【6】regions should match human expansion into those regions. On the contrary, if the extinction was【7】to climate change, elephants should remain in regions【8】colonized by humans and would only begin to die off once climate change occurred.
    The team tested both theories by analyzing where and when elephants were killed. In all, the study included 41 archaeological sites on five continents. The researchers found that, as humans【9】out of Africa, they left a trail of dead elephants behind them. The creatures disappear from the fossil record of a region once it became colonized by humans. Modern elephants survived in refu ges【10】to humans, such as tropical forests, says Surovell.
A. uninviting B. migrated C. declined D. due
E. memorial F. specific G. already N. used
I. hypothesis J. endurance K. resolve L. polish
M. altered O. species [br] 【10】
选项
答案 A
解析 此处的词应该与to humans一起作后置定语，修饰refuges，所以可能是形容词或动词的过去分词。从词义上来看，动词的过去分词不合适，所以答案肯定是形容词。而根据下文的such as tropical forests，此处应该是一个具有消极意义的形容词，所以选uninviting。refuges uninviting to humans意为“人类不感兴趣的地方”。
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