Critical Reasoning

Some scientists believe that 65 million years ago an asteroid struck what is now the Yucatan Peninsula, thereby causing extinction of the dinosaurs. These scientists have established that such a strike could have hurled enough debris into the atmosphere to block sunlight and cool the atmosphere. Without adequate sunlight, food sources for herbivorous dinosaurs would have disappeared, and no dinosaurs could have survived a prolonged period of low temperatures. These same scientists, however, have also established that most debris launched by the asteroid would have settled to the ground within six months, too soon for the plants to disappear or the dinosaurs to freeze.

Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent discrepancy between the scientists’ beliefs and the scientists’ results, as described above?

(A) Loss of the herbivorous dinosaurs would have deprived the carnivorous dinosaurs of their food source.

(B) Dinosaurs inhabited most landmasses on the planet but were not especially abundant in the area of the asteroid strike.

(C) A cloud of debris capable of diminishing sunlight by 20 percent would have cooled the earth’s surface by 7 to 10 degrees Celsius.

(D) The asteroid was at least 9.6 km in diameter, large enough for many dinosaurs to be killed by the strike itself and by subsequent tidal waves.

(E) Dinosaurs were susceptible to fatal respiratory problems cause by contamination of the air by asteroid debris.