4.
What information will probably be provided following the last paragraph?
___________________________________________________________
Key:
1 safe drinking water
should be a primary concern.
2 Americans
3 fight against the
worldwide water shortage and sanitation problem.
4
A list of nonprofit water
organizations to make contact with.
Section D
Directions:
Read the passage carefully. Then answer
the questions or complete the statements in the fewest possible words.
Small
discoveries in Indonesia
are causing a stir in the science world. Researchers have unearthed (挖掘) tiny bones that they
believe belong to an entirely new human species. If that’s true, it will change
how we think about our ancestors.
Clues
that the little people may have lived long ago were first revealed last year in
the scientific journal Nature.
Scientists said that they had found the bones of a three-foot-tall female on
the island of Flores,
in Indonesia.
When they looked more closely, they saw that the nearly complete skeleton (骨骼)
belonged to a full-grown adult. Researchers named her Hobbit, after the tiny
heroes of the Lord of the Rings
books.
Now
the team is saying it has unearthed even more pieces of the puzzle, including a
jawbone and parts of arms, legs and hands from several individuals, as well as
stone tools. They reported their find in Nature
this month. “The new evidence makes it very clear that these people are a new
species, distinct from modern humans,” Peter Brown, a scientist on the team,
said. They named these ancient humans Homo
floresiensis.
Brown
says that these little people lived as recently as 12,000 years ago. If Homo floresiensis was a different
species from modern humans, that would make our family tree bigger than we
knew. It means, says Brown, that “until recently, a relative shared the planet
with us.”
Many
scientists think a new species is unlikely. Some argue that the bones must have
belonged to modern humans whose small size was the result of a genetic problem.
Daniel
E. Lieberman, a scientist at Harvard
University, thinks that
the debate over the discovery is healthy. He believes that the questions and
arguments raised by critics will help us learn more about these unusual
skeletons. “Disagreement is an important part of the scientific process,” Lieberman
said. “As far as I’m concerned, the story’s only just begun.”