National Geographic Darwin

[perfectstranger]

Hi all !! I've provided some sentences below, thinking of some incorrect usage of grammar , S-V agreement and pronouns. Please provide explanation.

1) This cartoonish account of the Beagle voyage and its consequences contains a fair bit of truth but it also confuses,distorts and omits much.

Here why NG used contains instead of contain since contain is used for Beagle voyage and its consequences.

2) The reality of evolution became widely accepted during Darwin's lifetime ,but his particular theory didn't triumph until about 1940,after it had been sucessfully integrated with genetics.

did integration of theory with genetics not happen after the reality of evoloution got familiar? So why the NG used past perfect tense in the wrong place of the sentence?

3) It was a rhea,specifically Rhea Americana,ostrichlike in appearance but endemic to South Africa and the heaviest bird on the continent .

This one looks like a real gmat question. Yet , I did not understand especially .....heaviest bird on the continent.


4) For more than a month Beagle remained in that area , some of its crew occupied with surveying, others assigned to share duties ... digging a well,gathering firewood,hunting for meat.

Can't we use occupied to survey instead of occupied with surveying for not distorting paralelism.

5) Between that session and later efforts , he harvested from Punta Alta the remains of nine great mammals , all unknown or barely known to science.

Does ''he'' have a referent here ? Nothing has mentioned in the paragraph about he .

[bizwizashish]

what is the source ?

Because for example in first sentence i feel there is clearly S-V error.. keeping in mind some old similar post earlier.. however i read somewhere that its not that and always result in plural verb...

but want to confirm the source before i really answer anything.

[perfectstranger]

I've taken the sentences from National Geographic Magazine