Private collectors have been selling and buying fossils, the petrified remains of ancient organisms, ever since the eighteenth century. In recent years, however, the sale of fossils, particularly of dinosaurs and other large vertebrates, has grown into a big business. Rare and important fossils are now being sold to private ownership for millions of dollars. This is an unfortunate development for both scientists and the general public.
The public suffers because fossils that would otherwise be donated to museums where everyone can see them are sold to private collectors who do not allow the public to view their collections. Making it harder for the public to see fossils can lead to a decline in public interest in fossils, which would be a pity.
More importantly, scientists are likely to lose access to some of the most important fossils and thereby miss out on potentially crucial discoveries about extinct life forms. Wealthy fossil buyers with a desire to own the rarest and most important fossils can spend virtually limitless amounts of money to acquire them. Scientists and the museums and universities they work for often cannot compete successfully for fossils against millionaire fossil buyers.
Moreover, commercial fossil collectors often destroy valuable scientific evidence associated with the fossils they unearth. Most commercial fossil collectors are untrained or uninterestedin carrying out the careful field work and documentation that reveal the most about animal life in the past. For example, scientists have learned about the biology of nest-building dinosaurs called oviraptors by carefully observing the exact position of oviraptor fossils in the ground and the presence of other fossils in the immediate surroundings. Commercial fossil collectors typically pay no attention to how fossils lie in the ground or to the smaller fossils that may surround bigger ones.
The lecturer rejects the ideas presented in the reading passage about the problems involved in the booming business of commercial fossil trading. In her opinion, the benefits of this new development outweigh its negative consequences.
The lecturer does not agree with the first point made in the reading—that private collectors keep their fossil collections away from the public. She contends that the commercial trading of fossils actually makes them available to a wider public, because everyone with a budget, such as private schools and libraries, can purchase them for study and exhibition.
The lecturer goes on to refute the claim in the reading that fossil trading business prevents scientists and public museum from benefiting from fossil finds, as these parties cannot compete with wealthy private buyers to acquire important fossils for research purpose. On the contrary, she argues, scientists themselves are the first to evaluate any important fossil before it can be sold in the commercial market at a price, so the academic community does not miss any opportunity to study privately traded fossils.
Additionally, the lecturer challenges the final downside of fossil trading mentioned in the reading. The lecturer reminds us that the damages, if any, caused by private collectors in their field operations are more than offset by the effort these individuals have made to increase the number of fossils available to the public that would otherwise remain
Discourse Markers used:
['actually', 'first', 'if', 'so', 'such as', 'on the contrary']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.25702811245 0.261695866417 98% => OK
Verbs: 0.140562248996 0.158904122519 88% => OK
Adjectives: 0.104417670683 0.0723426182421 144% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0321285140562 0.0435111971325 74% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0441767068273 0.0277247811725 159% => OK
Prepositions: 0.14859437751 0.128828473217 115% => OK
Participles: 0.0361445783133 0.0370669169778 98% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.74319918652 2.5805825403 106% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0281124497992 0.0208969081088 135% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.00154638098197 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.140562248996 0.128158765124 110% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0160642570281 0.0158828679856 101% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.00401606425703 0.0114777025283 35% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 1490.0 1645.83664459 91% => OK
No of words: 230.0 271.125827815 85% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 6.47826086957 6.08160592843 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.89432290496 4.04852973271 96% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.460869565217 0.374372842146 123% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.365217391304 0.287516216867 127% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.252173913043 0.187439937562 135% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.130434782609 0.113142543107 115% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74319918652 2.5805825403 106% => OK
Unique words: 136.0 145.348785872 94% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.591304347826 0.539623497131 110% => OK
Word variations: 58.9607123168 53.8517498576 109% => OK
How many sentences: 8.0 13.0529801325 61% => OK
Sentence length: 28.75 21.7502111507 132% => OK
Sentence length SD: 67.0554807603 49.3711431718 136% => OK
Chars per sentence: 186.25 132.220823453 141% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.75 21.7502111507 132% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.75 0.878197800319 85% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 3.39072847682 0% => OK
Readability: 65.2717391304 50.5018328374 129% => OK
Elegance: 2.03703703704 1.90840788429 107% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.354341962213 0.549887131256 64% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.152695724369 0.142949733639 107% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0544175163836 0.0787303798458 69% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.750119421723 0.631733273073 119% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.0920487599181 0.139662658121 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.212194653697 0.266732575781 80% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.047745443671 0.103435571967 46% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.423336561148 0.414875509568 102% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0518047414648 0.0530846634433 98% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.272996420939 0.40443939384 67% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0423651808702 0.0528353158467 80% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 1.0 4.33554083885 23% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 4.45695364238 135% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.26048565121 23% => More neutral sentences wanted.
Positive topic words: 1.0 3.49668874172 29% => More positive topic words wanted.
Negative topic words: 5.0 3.62251655629 138% => OK
Neutral topic words: 1.0 3.1766004415 31% => OK
Total topic words: 7.0 10.2958057395 68% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 80.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 24.0 Out of 30
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Note: This is not the final score. 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.