Part 1
The Burgess Shale Fossils
The Burgess Shale Fossils
Fauna vanished with a whimper, not a bang
A
Some discoveries are so unusual that it takes decades, and sometimes even centuries, to understand their full significance. One such discovery is the fossil bed known as the Burgess Shale, which contains a record of bizarre creatures that lived 505 million years ago. It was discovered in the Canadian Rockies over a century ago and was popularised in 1989 in a book, Wonderful Life, by the American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould.
B
The Burgess Shale fossils were created at a time when the future Canadian land mass was situated near the Earth’s equator. The creatures were preserved when an entire marine ecosystem was buried in mud that eventually hardened and became exposed hundreds of millions of years later in an outcrop of the Rocky Mountains.
American palaeontologist Charles Walcott, following reports of remarkable fossil finds by construction workers digging in the mountains for a Canadian railway in the late 19th century, is said to have tripped over a block of shale in 1909 that revealed the area’s extraordinary supply of specimens.
It has long been believed that the curious fauna that lived there vanished in a series of extinctions because the fossil record ends abruptly. However, that no longer appears to be the case.
C
The Burgess Shale began to form soon after a period known as the Cambrian explosion, when most major groups of complex animals arose over a surprisingly short period. Before 560 million years ago, most living things were either individual cells or simple colonies of cells. Then, for reasons that remain a mystery, life diversified enormously and became increasingly complex as the rate of evolution accelerated.
An unusual feature of the Burgess Shale is that it is one of the earliest fossil beds to contain impressions of soft body parts alongside the remains of bones and shells, which is highly unusual.
D
Although the fossil bed was discovered on a mountain, these animals originally lived beneath an ocean, the bed of which was later pushed upwards to create the Rockies. Nobody knows exactly why they were so well preserved.
One possibility is that the creatures were buried rapidly and under conditions that were hostile to the bacteria responsible for the decomposition of soft body parts.
E
Those who first worked on the Burgess Shale, unearthing 65,000 specimens over a fourteen-year period up to 1924, assumed that the fossils came from extinct members of animal groups that still exist today. This assumption turned out to be misleading because many of the creatures are so unusual that they remain difficult to classify.
F
One such example is Opabinia, a creature that grew to approximately eight centimetres in length. It had five eyes, a body consisting of a series of lobes, a fan-shaped tail and a proboscis used for feeding. The proboscis had a set of grasping claws at its end, with which the creature seized food and placed it into its mouth.
Nectocaris, meanwhile, could be mistaken for a leech, but it also had fins and tentacles.
Strangest of all was Hallucigenia, described by palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris when he re-examined Walcott’s specimens in 1979. With its numerous spines and tentacles, little about Hallucigenia appeared to make sense.
Scientists hypothesised that the spines were legs that helped it move and that the tentacles were used for feeding. Like an abstract painting, its orientation was initially a mystery, making it difficult to determine which way up it travelled, where food entered and where waste left its body.
G
Palaeontologists had long believed that many of the Burgess Shale animals represented experiments in evolution. In other words, they were entirely new forms of life that neither survived nor gave rise to other groups or species.
Hallucigenia, ironically, turned out to be the exception that proved the rule. It is now believed to be an ancestor of the modern group of arthropods, which includes organisms ranging from flies and butterflies to centipedes and crabs.
H
Another misconception has now been challenged. Writing recently in Nature, Peter Van Roy of Yale University in the United States and his colleagues suggest that the sudden disappearance of these unusual soft-bodied fossils does not indicate a mass extinction. Instead, it may merely represent the end of the exceptional local conditions that allowed the creatures to be preserved.
In an area of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, Van Roy’s research team has found another diverse and sometimes bizarre collection of soft-bodied organisms dating from a period after the Burgess Shale was formed. One discovery includes a creature that may have been a stalked barnacle. This suggests that the evolution of complex forms of life continued without interruption.
For its part, the Burgess Shale continues to produce an astonishing variety of creatures that are difficult to define, faster than palaeontologists can examine them. The world still has much to learn about this remarkable life.
Questions 1--5
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
1. The Burgess Shale became widely known to the public because of Gould’s book.
2. Charles Walcott had to obtain permission from the Canadian authorities before he could enter the fossil site.
3. The Burgess Shale contains impressions of both soft and hard body parts.
4. The creatures preserved in the Burgess Shale originally lived on land.
5. Researchers now believe that Hallucigenia is unrelated to any modern creature.
Questions 6--9
Complete the notes below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
Burgess Shale
Formation
• The Burgess Shale was formed following a period called the 6.
Discovery and investigation in the 20th century
• Discovered in 1909.
• Charles Walcott learnt about the fossil discoveries from people constructing a 7.
• The first major work on the Burgess Shale was undertaken during the early part of the century.
• A researcher re-examined Burgess Shale specimens in 8.
Recent theories
• Peter Van Roy believes that discoveries in Morocco demonstrate that the 9 of complex forms of life continued.
Questions 10--13
Complete the table below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Burgess Shale Creatures
| Name | Features |
|---|---|
| Opabinia | Five eyes
A tail resembling a 10 Claws used to hold 11 |
| Nectocaris | Resembled a 12
Fins Tentacles |
| Hallucigenia | Spines believed to help it 13
Tentacles |
Part 2
What Is an Unfair Advantage in Sport?
What Is an Unfair Advantage in Sport?
Olympic athletes increasingly depend on technology to help them win -- but is that fair?
A
What happened to the Australian athlete Ron Clarke in the 10,000 metres at the Mexico City Olympics of 1968 is now virtually forgotten, although it was headline news at the time. Clarke was the greatest distance runner in history -- he had broken more world records than anyone else.
However, in front of 55,000 horrified spectators, the event went disastrously wrong. On the third lap, one runner collapsed, and with six laps remaining, two more were carried away. Yet the race was taking place at a relatively leisurely speed: the halfway time was the slowest recorded since the Paris Olympics of 1924.
With two laps remaining, Clarke was among the leading group.
"I had never felt better in a race," he says.
Suddenly, however, he too began to struggle. As the frontrunners increased their speed, a gap opened between them and Clarke. He remembers nothing of his final lap, which took him ninety seconds.
"Normally, I would run it in sixty-four," he explains.
He stumbled across the finishing line in sixth place and collapsed. Oxygen was administered, and he was carried away from the track on a stretcher.
B
Mexico City is surrounded by mountains and lies more than 2,240 metres above sea level. It had been predicted that the altitude would affect the Games.
Clarke himself had raised the issue, but the Australian sporting authorities told him that complaining would be considered poor sportsmanship. As events demonstrated, he had good reason to be concerned. The connection between athletic performance and altitude clearly required further investigation.
C
Although there were few outstanding performances in distance running at the Mexico Games, they represented a turning point: the beginning of an extraordinary period of success for East African runners.
While Clarke lay collapsed on the ground, runners from Kenya and Ethiopia were celebrating gold and silver medals. The record books demonstrate how firmly established this pattern has become.
The seven fastest men in history over 5,000 metres are Bekele, Gebrselassie, Komen, Kipchoge, Sihine, Songkok and Cherono. Every one of them is from either Kenya or Ethiopia.
Between 1997 and 2011, the men’s 10,000-metre world record was broken five times, falling from 26:31.32 to 26:17.53. On each occasion, the new record was set by a Kenyan or an Ethiopian.
Although a complex combination of economic, political, social and cultural factors explains the dominance of East African athletes, one important factor is surely that many have lived most of their lives in thin air.
D
At high altitudes, several physiological changes occur. Most importantly, the body produces more red blood cells and haemoglobin. This increases the blood’s capacity to transport oxygen, which supplies the muscles and gives athletes an advantage when they return to sea level.
However, athletes cannot train at the same intensity in the mountains because both aerobic capacity and cardiorespiratory function are reduced at altitude.
Consequently, the generally accepted optimum approach to athletic preparation is "Live High, Train Low", or LHTL. This method, however, has obvious practical disadvantages. Few people live in the mountains, and those who do would prefer not to spend several hours each day driving along winding and dangerous roads between different altitudes.
E
This is where the altitude tent, sometimes known as the hypoxic tent, becomes useful. Approximately two decades ago, two scientists independently developed the same idea.
If the atmosphere inside an enclosed space could be artificially controlled, the effects of high altitude could be simulated. This would save an athlete living at sea level the time and expense of travelling to higher ground.
Altitude tents have improved over the years. They are no longer as hot or noisy as the early prototypes, and they are considerably cheaper. They are also completely legal.
When the tents were investigated by WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, it was concluded that they did not violate the spirit of distance running. Athletes now routinely sleep in them while preparing for competitions.
F
Not all new technologies, however, receive approval. In 2008, an extraordinary 105 world records were broken in swimming, the great majority by competitors wearing the Speedo LZR Racer suit.
The suits used a high-technology fabric tested in NASA wind tunnels. The material reduced drag and improved buoyancy. The LZR suit was initially approved by FINA, the international governing body for swimming.
However, as increasingly advanced suits were produced by Speedo and other manufacturers and more records were broken, they became increasingly controversial. In a ruling issued in 2009, FINA reversed its earlier decision and prohibited all suits made from the high-technology fabric.
G
Going faster, higher and stronger is fundamental to the logic of athletics in general and the Olympic Games in particular. Athletes believe that they must continually establish new records.
The only way to achieve this is by improving clothing, equipment, training and nutrition -- all in an effort to identify differences between competitors as small as 0.0001 of a second.
Whenever a new technology is invented, the relevant sporting authority must decide whether to accept or reject it. In some cases, athletes are permitted to use the technology; in others, it is prohibited.
Whatever the final decision, rulings should not appear arbitrary. The arguments must be carefully examined and balanced, and the logic underlying the rules should be applied consistently in every case.
Questions 14--20
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A--G.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use all of them.
* Drag a heading and drop it into the blank space.
Questions 21 and 22
Choose TWO letters, A--E.
Which TWO statements about Ron Clarke are made in the passage?
Questions 23--26
Complete the summary below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Do All New Technologies Gain Approval?
Some people may be confused by attitudes towards performance-enhancing technologies in sport. For example, why is an altitude tent regarded as acceptable while the LZR Racer suit is not?
In distance running, WADA concluded that altitude tents were not contrary to the 23 of the sport. However, the LZR swimsuit, which was made from a special fabric that improved buoyancy and reduced 24, was eventually prohibited.
Athletes believe that they must continually establish new 25. This can be achieved through better 26 and training, as well as improved clothing and equipment.
However, when sporting authorities decide whether to approve a new performance-enhancing technology, it is important that their decisions do not appear arbitrary.
Part 3
Memory Champions… or Just Good at Tricks?
Memory Champions… or Just Good at Tricks?
A
The Examinations School at Oxford University, known for its musty yet impressive setting of oak-panelled rooms, large Gothic windows and towering portraits of eminent figures, was the venue last August for the World Memory Championships.
It is here that generations of Oxford students have taken their final examinations, and it was here that thirty-four competitors gathered to demonstrate their extraordinary mnemonic abilities.
Reciting poems, memorising sequences of digits and recalling faces from photographs were just some of the tasks used to test the limits of human memory in this competitive environment.
B
Many competitors use a technique known as the method of loci, which reportedly originated in 477 BC with the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos.
According to legend, Simonides was able to remember the guest list at a dinner by closing his eyes and recalling where each individual had been seated around the table.
The method of loci involves associating information that must be remembered with particular physical locations, thereby creating mental pathways that can later be revisited.
After Simonides’ discovery, the method became widely used throughout ancient Greece and served as an essential technique for orators and scholars. It proved so effective that it was incorporated into educational programmes and became a central element of rhetorical training.
Roman writers also praised the method, recognising its value and effectiveness. A number of works on the art of memory were later published in Rome, further strengthening its importance in memory training.
C
One memory champion, Ed Cooke, can memorise the order of several packs of playing cards in less than an hour, or a single pack in under one minute.
Psychologists Elizabeth Valentine and John Wilding have joined Eleanor Maguire to study how memory champions such as Cooke operate differently from average individuals.
Their collaboration examines the neural mechanisms that may explain the exceptional memory skills demonstrated by competitors under the pressure of memory championships.
When the researchers analysed brain scans taken during number-memorisation tasks, they found that the memory champions activated certain brain regions that differed from those used by the control participants. These regions are known to be involved in visual memory and spatial navigation.
D
To enable himself to memorise information rapidly, Cooke has assigned a particular human being, verb and object to every card in a pack.
When memorising a pack, he processes three cards at a time. Each three-card combination forms a composite image of a person performing an action on an object.
He then places these images along a particular familiar path in his mind, creating a vivid mental journey that he can later follow.
When recalling the cards, Cooke takes a mental walk along this route and converts the images back into the individual cards, thereby reconstructing the precise order of the pack.
E
The expression "photographic memory" is frequently used to describe people with exceptional powers of recall. Most researchers, however, agree that there is no evidence that such a form of memory genuinely exists.
If photographic memory is indeed a myth, this demonstrates how learned strategies can be more effective than natural ability.
The belief in photographic memory remains a subject of disagreement among members of the public and scientists. Despite the absence of reliable scientific evidence, the myth persists, reflecting society’s fascination with extraordinary memory and its tendency to overlook the practical methods and training that actually produce mnemonic success.
F
The most famous of the so-called natural memory experts was the Russian journalist S. V. Shereshevski. He could remember long sequences of numbers learnt decades earlier, as well as poems, strings of meaningless syllables and almost anything else he was asked to recall.
Shereshevski experienced synaesthesia, a rare sensory condition in which different senses are interconnected, and this considerably improved his ability to memorise information.
His abilities extended far beyond isolated accomplishments. His memory covered an extraordinary range of material, making him an important subject of scientific study.
G
The well-known psychologist K. Anders Ericsson argues that anyone can develop memory skills comparable to those of memory champions through consistent practice and appropriate techniques.
During two years of experiments, a participant known as S. F. increased the number of digits he could recall from seven to more than eighty. This led Ericsson to conclude that an innately superior memory does not exist.
When Ericsson re-examined original case reports concerning mnemonists, he discovered that their remarkable abilities were actually based on particular techniques -- sometimes used unconsciously -- combined with extensive practice.
Mnemonists are generally outstanding at remembering only certain types of material. Naturals, by contrast, demonstrate powerful memory across many different tasks and may retain information for long periods.
Questions 27--32
Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs, A--G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB You may use any letter more than once.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27. a description of how a contestant remembers complicated sequences | |||||||
| 28. an example of one person’s memory improving over a period of time | |||||||
| 29. a description of a competitive event involving memory | |||||||
| 30. a widespread belief about memory that many specialists consider unproven | |||||||
| 31. a reference to the earliest recorded use of a location-based memory technique | |||||||
| 32. a reference to an unusual condition that improves a person’s memory |
Questions 33--36
Complete the notes below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Ed Cooke’s Method for Memorising a Pack of Cards
• A particular person, action and object are assigned to 33.
• Combining these images enables Cooke to memorise 34 at a time.
• The mental images are then placed along a 35.
• The pack is recalled by taking a 36, during which the images are converted back into individual cards.
Questions 37--40
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A--F.
There are more endings than sentences, so you will not use all of them.
37. Valentine, Wilding and Maguire’s experiment demonstrated that memory competitors
37
38. After Simonides developed the method of loci in 477 BC, it
38
39. Ericsson found that the remarkable abilities of mnemonists
39
40. The improvement in S. F.’s performance
40
