Questions 11-20 are based on the following passage.
Passage A by Stephen S. Hall
SOCIAL SCIENCE: Passage A is adapted from the article "The Other Humans: Neanderthals Revealed" by Stephen S. Hall (©2008 by The National Geographic Society). Passage B is adapted from the editorial "Fossils for All" by the editors of the journal Scientific American (©2009 by Scientific American, Inc.).
One of the longest and most heated controversies
in human evolution rages around the genetic relation-
ship between Neanderthals and their European succes-
sors. Did the modern humans sweeping out of Africa
5 beginning some 60,000 years ago completely replace
the Neanderthals, or did they interbreed with them? In
1997 the latter hypothesis was dealt a powerful blow by
geneticist Svante Paabo-then at the University of
Munich-who used an arm bone from the original
10 Neanderthal man to deliver it. Paabo and his colleagues
were able to extract a tiny 378-letter snippet of mito-
chondrial DNA (a kind of short genetic appendix to the
main text in each cell) from the 40,000-year-old speci-
men. When they read out the letters of the code they
15 found that the specimen's DNA differed from living
humans to a degree suggesting that the Neanderthal and
modern human lineages had begun to diverge long
before the modern human migration out of Africa. Thus
the two represent separate geographic and evolutionary
20 branches splitting from a common ancestor. If there
was any interbreeding when they encountered each
other later, it was too rare to leave a trace of Nean-
derthal mitochondrial DNA in the cells of living
people.
25 Paabo's genetic bombshell seemed to confirm that
Neanderthals were a separate species.
However, "During this time of the biological tran-
sition," says Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist at
Washington University in St. Louis, "the baste behavior
30 [of the two groups] is pretty much the same, and any
differences are likely to have been subtle." Trinkaus
believes they indeed may have mated occasionally. He
sees evidence of admixture between Neanderthals and
modern humans in certain fossils, such as a 24,500-
35 year-old skeleton of a child discovered at the Por-
tuguese site of Lagar Velho. and a 32,000-year-old skull
from a cave called Muierii in Romania.
Katerina Harvati, a researcher at the Max Planck
Institute in Leipzig, has used detailed 3-D measure-
40 ments of Neanderthal and early modern human fossils
to predict exactly what hybrids between the two would
have looked like. None of the fossils examined so far
matches her predictions.
The disagreement between Trinkaus and Harvati is
45 hardly the first time that two respected paleoanthropol-
ogists have looked at the same set of bones and come
up with mutually contradictory interpretations. Ponder-
ing-and debating-the meaning of fossil anatomy will
always play a role in understanding Neanderthals.
Passage B by the editors of Scientific American
50 In June of 2009 the famed Lucy fossil arrived in
New York City. The 3.2-million-year-old partial skele-
ton of Australopithecus afarensis could attract hundreds
of thousands of visitors over the course of her four-
month engagement-part of a six-year tour.
55 Before this tour,Lucy had never been on public
display outside of Ethiopia. One might expect scholars
of human evolution to be delighted by the opportunity
to share the discipline's crown jewel with so many
members of the science-interested public. But news
60 reports announcing her New York debut included the
same objections that aired when she first landed in the
U.S: namely, that the bones could sustain damage and
that the tour takes a key specimen out of scientific cir-
culation for too long. Indeed, some major meseums
65 turned the exhibit away in part for those reasons
The objections reflect a larger problem of posses-
siveness in the field of human origins. Indeed. fossil
hunters often block other scientists from studying their
treasures, fearing assessments that could scoop or dis-
70 agree with their own. In so doing. they are taking the
science out of paleoanthropology.
Critics of such secrecy commonly point to the case
of Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4-million-year-old human
ancestor discovered by Tim White of the University of
75 California. Berkeley. Fifteen years after White
announced the first fossils of A. ramidus and touted the
importance of this species for understanding human ori-
gins, access to the specimens remains highly restricted.
White, for his part, has said that be published only
80 an initial report and that normal practice is to limit
access until publication of a full assessment And he
has noted that the condition of a key specimen-a badly
crushed skeleton-has slowed the release of the team's
detailed report.
85 The scientists who unearth the remnants of human-
ity's past deserve first crack at describing and analyz-
ing them. But there sh«?uld be clear limJts on this period
science is impeded: outside researchers can neither
90 reproduce the discovery team's findings nor test new
hypotheses.