Archaeologists have recently found a fossil of a 150-million-year-old mammal
known as Repenornamus robustus (R. robustus). Interestingly, the mammal's
stomach contained the remains of a psittacosaur dinosaur. Some researchers have
therefore suggested that R. robustus was an active hunter of dinosaurs. However,
a closer analysis has made the hypothesis that R. robustus was an active hunter
unlikely. It was probably Just a scavenger that sometimes fed on dinosaur eggs
containing unhatched dinosaurs.
First, R. robustus, like most mammals living 150 million years ago, was small—
only about the size of a domestic cat. It was much smaller than psittacosaurs,
which were almost two meters tall when full grown. Given this size difference, it is
unlikely that R. robustus would have been able to successfully hunt psittacosaurs
or similar dinosaurs.
Second, the legs of R. robustus appear much more suited for scavenging
than hunting: they were short and positioned somewhat to the side rather than
directly underneath the animal. These features suggest that R. robustus did not
chase after prey. Psittacosaurs—the type of dinosaur found in the stomach of
R. robustus—were fast moving. It is unlikely that they would have been caught by
such short-legged animals.
Third, the dinosaur bones inside the stomach of the R. robustus provide no
evidence to support the idea that the dinosaur had been actively hunted. When
an animal has been hunted and eaten by another animal, there are usually teeth
marks on the bones of the animal that was eaten. But the bones of the psittacosaur
inside the R. robustus stomach do not have teeth marks. This suggests that
R. robustus found an unguarded dinosaur nest with eggs and simply swallowed an
egg with the small psittacosaur still inside the eggshell.
In his commentary, the author describes the reasons why Robustus was a scavenger rather than a predator. The lecturer casts doubt on the claims made in the article. She uses the following evidence to suggest that neither relatively small size nor the positions of its legs, or absence of teeth marks indicates that the ancient animal was a scavenger.
The first contradicting point is the relation of the size of Repenomamus robustus to its prospective prey’s size. According to the reading passage, the size of an ancient animal was relatively small, which makes it impossible to hunt of large animals. The lecturer rebuts this argument, saying that Robustus could actually eat babies of large dinosaurs. She boosts her argument, bringing forth the idea that the predators were twice the mass of their preys, and the dinosaur, which was found in the stomach of Robustus, was actually twice lighter than the hunter.
Another controversial issue is the position of its legs on the body. The author claims that the legs of an animal were too small for hunting, because Robustus was a slow-runner. The lecturer, on the other hand, posits that the modern short-legged hunter with the same position of its legs as Robustus, the Tasmanian devil, could achieve the speed of 15 kilometres per hour.
The third contradicting point is the absence of the teeth marks of the bones, which were found in the stomach of an ancient animal. According to the reading, the hunters usually used teeth to chew its preys, leaving marks on their bones. The lecturer contradicts this point, saying that the author overlooks important thing, such as the ability of the predator to swallow its prey whole, leaving no teeth marks at all.
All in all, the author of the reading passage and the lecturer have different points of view. While the former believes that Robustus was unlikely a hunter, the latter demonstrates the overlooked by the author important things, demonstrating otherwise.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 1, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...e the speed of 15 kilometres per hour. The third contradicting point is the absenc...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, if, look, so, third, while, such as, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 10.4613686534 124% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 2.0 5.04856512141 40% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 7.30242825607 55% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 11.0 12.0772626932 91% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 22.412803532 103% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 30.3222958057 125% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 5.01324503311 160% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1645.0 1373.03311258 120% => OK
No of words: 326.0 270.72406181 120% => OK
Chars per words: 5.04601226994 5.08290768461 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.24917287072 4.04702891845 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.64624383249 2.5805825403 103% => OK
Unique words: 166.0 145.348785872 114% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.509202453988 0.540411800872 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 493.2 419.366225166 118% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.55342163355 97% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 3.25607064018 61% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.23620309051 158% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 1.25165562914 160% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.51434878587 132% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 2.5761589404 155% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 13.0662251656 115% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 21.2450331126 99% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.6689551653 49.2860985944 91% => OK
Chars per sentence: 109.666666667 110.228320801 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.7333333333 21.698381199 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.06666666667 7.06452816374 72% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.09492273731 122% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 4.19205298013 24% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 1.0 4.33554083885 23% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 4.45695364238 179% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.27373068433 140% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0932935059057 0.272083759551 34% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.033249062433 0.0996497079465 33% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0271671941453 0.0662205650399 41% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.053564341812 0.162205337803 33% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0232956316246 0.0443174109184 53% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 13.3589403974 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 53.8541721854 109% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 5.55761589404 158% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 11.0289183223 93% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.01 12.2367328918 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.21 8.42419426049 97% => OK
difficult_words: 73.0 63.6247240618 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 10.7273730684 107% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 10.498013245 99% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.2008830022 107% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Write the essay in 20 minutes.
It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 3.33333333333 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 Out of 30
---------------------
Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.