2017年9月24日托福阅读机经预测超小范围版

　　地质类

　　Early Theories of Continental Drift

　　参考阅读：

　　The idea that the past geography of Earth was different from today is not new. The earliest maps showing the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa probably provided people with the first evidence that continents may have once been joined together, then broken apart and moved to their present positions.

　　During the late nineteenth century, Austrian geologist Eduard Suess noted the similarities between the Late Paleozoic plant fossils of India, Australia, South Africa, and South America. The plant fossils comprise a unique group of plants that occurs in coal layers just above the glacial deposits on these southern continents. In this book The Face of the Earth (1885), he proposed the name “Gondwanaland” (called Gondwana here) for a supercontinent composed of the aforementioned southern landmasses. Suess thought these southern continents were connected by land bridges over which plants and animals migrated. Thus, in his view, the similarities of fossils on these continents were due to the appearance and disappearance of the connecting land bridges.

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　　Attempts at Determining Earth’s Age

　　参考阅读：

　　Since the dawn of civilization, people have been curious about the age of Earth. In addition, we have not been satisfied in being able to sate merely the relative geologic age of a rock or fossil. Human curiosity demands that we know actual age in years.

　　Geologists working during the nineteenth century understood rock bodies, they would have to concentrate on natural processes that continue at a constant rate and that also leave some sort of tangible record in the rocks. Evolution is one such process, and geologist Charles Lyell (1797-1875) recognized this. BY comparing the amount of evolution exhibited by marine mollusks then, Lyell estimated that 80 million years had elapsed since the beginning of the Tertiary Period. He came astonishingly close to the mark, since it was actually about 65 million years. However, for older sequence of evolutionary development, estimates based on parts in the fossil record. Rates of evolution for many orders of plants and animals were not well understood.

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　　How Soil is Formed

　　Earth’s Energy Cycle

　　Thermal Stratification

　　天文类Surface Fluids on Venus and Earth

　　环境类

　　The Climate of Japan

　　经济类

　　Effects of the Commercial Revolution

　　文化艺术类

　　The Origins of Writing

　　The Development of Printing

　　考古类

　　Environmental Impact of the Anasazi

　　The Chaco Phenomenon

　　科学类

　　The Birth of Photography

　　农业类

　　Agricultural Society in Eighteenth- Century British America

　　社会类

　　Population Growth in Nineteenth-Century Europe

　　生物类

　　Extinctions at the End of the Cretaceous

　　The Cambrian Explosion

　　Constraints on Natural Selection