Duckbill dinosaurs, like today’s monitor lizards, had particularly long tails, which they could whip at considerable speed. Monitor lizards use their tales to strike predators. However, although duckbill tails were otherwise very similar to those of monitor lizards, the duckbill’s tailbones were proportionately much thinner and thus more delicate. Moreover, to ward off their proportionately much larger predators, duckbills would have had to whip their tails considerably faster than monitor lizards do.

The information given, if accurate, provides the strongest support for which of the following hypotheses?

A. If duckbills whipped their tails faster than monitor lizards do, the duckbill’s tail would have been effective at warding off the duckbills’ fiercest predators.
B. Duckbills used their tails to strike predators, and their tailbones were frequently damaged from the impact.
C. Using their tails was not the only means duckbills had for warding off predators.
D. Duckbills were at much greater risk of being killed by a predator than monitor lizards are.
E. The tails of duckbills, if used to ward off predators, would have been more likely than the tails of monitor lizards to sustain damage from the impact.

E