THE DINOSAURS FOOTPRINTS AND EXTINCTION

PASSAGE
A. EVERYBODY knows that the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid. Something big hit the
earth 65 million years ago and, when the dust had fallen, so had the great reptiles. There is thus a
nice, if ironic, symmetry in the idea that a similar impact brought about the dinosaurs’ rise. That
is the thesis proposed by Paul Olsen, of Columbia University, and his colleagues in this week’s
Science.
B. Dinosaurs first appear in the fossil record 230m years ago, dining the Triassic period. But they
were mostly small, and they shared the earth with lots of other sorts of reptile. It was in the
subsequent Jurassic, which began 202million years ago, that they overran the planet and turned
into the monsters depicted in the book and movie “Jurassic Park”. (Actually, though, the
dinosaurs that appeared on screen were from the still more recent Cretaceous period.) Dr Olsen
and his colleagues are not the first to suggest that the dinosaurs inherited the earth as the result of
an asteroid strike. But they are the first to show that the takeover did, indeed, happen in a
geological eyeblink.
C. Dinosaur skeletons are rare. Dinosaur footprints are, however, surprisingly abundant. And the
sizes of the prints are as good an indication of the sizes of the beasts as are the skeletons
themselves. Dr Olsen and his colleagues therefore concentrated on prints, not bones.
D. The prints in question were made in eastern North America, a part of the world then full of
rift valleys similar to those in East Africa today. Like the modem African rift valleys, the
Triassic /Jurassic American ones contained lakes, and these lakes grew and shrank at regular
intervals because of climatic changes caused by periodic shifts in the earth’s orbit. (A similar
phenomenon is responsible for modem ice ages.) That regularity, combined with reversals in the
earth’s magnetic field, which are detectable in the tiny fields of certain magnetic minerals, means
that rocks from this place and period can be dated to within a few thousand years. As a bonus,
squish lake-edge sediments are just the things for recording the tracks of passing animals. By
dividing the labour between themselves, the ten authors of the paper were able to study such
tracks at 80 sites.
E. The researchers looked at 18 so-called ichnotaxa. These are recognisable types of footprint
that cannot be matched precisely with the species of animal that left them. But they can be
matched with a general sort of animal, and thus act as an indicator of the fate of that group, even
when there are no bones to tell the story. Five of the ichnotaxa disappear before the end of the
Triassic, and four march confidently across the boundary into the Jurassic. Six, however, vanish
at the boundary, or only just splutter across it; and three appear from nowhere, almost as soon as
the Jurassic begins.
F. That boundary itself is suggestive. The first geological indication of the impact that killed the
dinosaurs was an unusually high level of iridium in rocks at the end of the Cretaceous, when the
beasts disappear from the fossil record. Iridium is normally rare at the earth’s surface, but it is
more abundant in meteorites. When people began to believe the impact theory, they started
looking for other Cretaceous-end anomalies. One that turned up was a surprising abundance of
fern spores in rocks just above the boundary layer—a phenomenon known as a “fern spike”
G. That matched the theory nicely. Many modem ferns are opportunists. They cannot compete
against plants with leaves, but if a piece of land is cleared by, say, a volcanic emption, they are
often the first things to set up shop there. An asteroid strike would have scoured much of the
earth of its vegetable cover, and provided a paradise for ferns. A fem spike in the rocks is thus a
good indication that southing terrible has happened.
H. Both an iridium anomaly and a fem spike appear in rocks at the end of the Triassic, too. That
accounts for the disappearing ichnotaxa: the creatures that made them did not survive the
holocaust. The surprise is how rapidly the new ichnotaxa appear.
I. Dr Olsen and his colleagues suggest that the explanation for this rapid increase in size may be
a phenomenon called ecological release. This is seen today when reptiles (which, in modem
times, tend to be small creatures) reach islands where they face no competitors. The most
spectacular example is on the Indonesian island of Komodo, where local lizards have grown so
large that they are often referred to as dragons. The dinosaurs, in other words, could flourish only
when the competition had been knocked out.
J. That leaves the question of where the impact happened. No large hole in the earth’s crust
seems to be 202m years old. It may, of course, have been overlooked. Old craters are eroded and
buried, and not always easy to find. Alternatively, it may have vanished. Although continental
crust is more or less permanent, the ocean floor is constantly recycled by the tectonic processes
that bring about continental drift. There is no ocean floor left that is more than 200m years old,
so a crater that formed in the ocean would have been swallowed up by now.
K. There is a third possibility, however. This is that the crater is known, but has been misdated.
The Manicouagan “structure”, a crater in Quebec, is thought to be 214m years old. It is huge—
some 100km across—and seems to be the largest of between three and five craters that formed
within a few hours of each other as the lumps of a disintegrated comet hit the earth one by one.
QUESTIONS
Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In
boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this passage
1. Dr Paul Olsen and his colleagues believe that asteroid knock may also lead to dinosaurs’
boom.
2. Books and movie like Jurassic Park  often exaggerate the size of the dinosaurs.
3. Dinosaur footprints are more adequate than dinosaur skeletons.
4. The prints were chosen by Dr Olsen to study because they are more detectable than earth
magnetic field to track a date of geological precise within thousands years.
5. Ichnotaxa showed that footprints of dinosaurs offer exact information of the trace left by an
individual species.
6. We can find more Iridium in the earth’s surface than in meteorites.
Questions 7-13
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of  Reading Passage 1, using  no more than
two words from the Reading Passage 1 for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet.
Dr Olsen and his colleagues applied a phenomenon named……7……..to explain the large size
of the Eubrontes, which is a similar case to that nowadays reptiles invade a place where there are
no……8……; for example, on an island called Komodo, indigenous huge lizards grow so big
that people even regarding them as……9……. However, there were no old impact trace being
found? The answer may be that we have ……10…… the evidence. Old craters are difficult to
spot or it probably……11…….due to the effect of the earth moving. Even a crater formed in
Ocean had been ……12…… under the impact of crust movement. Beside the third hypothesis is
that the potential evidences — some craters may be ……13…….
A. How busy is too busy? For some it means having to miss the occasional

long lunch; for others, it means missing lunch altogether. For a few, it is not

being able to take a “sickie” once a month. Then there is a group of people

for whom working every evening and weekend is normal, and frantic is the

tempo of their lives. For most senior executives, workloads swing between

extremely busy and frenzied. The vice-president of the management

consultancy AT Kearney and its head of telecommunications for the Asia-

Pacific region, Neil Plumridge, says his work weeks vary from a

“manageable” 45 hours to 80 hours, but average 60 hours.

B. Three warning signs alert Plumridge about his workload: sleep,

scheduling and family. He knows he has too much on when he gets

less than six hours of sleep for three consecutive nights; when he is

constantly having to reschedule appointments; “and the third one is on

the family side”, says Plumridge, the father of a three-year-old

daughter, and expecting a second child in October. “If I happen to

miss a birthday or anniversary, I know things are out of control.” Being

“too busy” is highly subjective. But for any individual, the perception of
being too busy over a prolonged period can start showing up as

stress: disturbed sleep, and declining mental and physical health.

National workers’ compensation figures show stress causes the most

lost time of any workplace injury. Employees suffering stress are off

work an average of 16.6 weeks. The effects of stress are also

expensive. Comcare, the Federal Government insurer, reports that in

2003-04, claims for psychological injury accounted for 7% of claims

but almost 27% of claim costs. Experts say the key to dealing with

stress is not to focus on relief – a game of golf or a massage – but to

reassess workloads. Neil Plumridge says he makes it a priority to work

out what has to change; that might mean allocating extra resources to

a job, allowing more time or changing expectations. The decision may

take several days. He also relies on the advice of colleagues, saying

his peers coach each other with business problems. “Just a fresh pair

of eyes over an issue can help,” he says.

C. Executive stress is not confined to big organisations. Vanessa Stoykov has

been running her own advertising and public relations business for seven

years, specialising in work for financial and professional services firms.

Evolution Media has grown so fast that it debuted on the BRW Fast 100 list
of fastest-growing small enterprises last year – just after Stoykov had her first

child. Stoykov thrives on the mental stimulation of running her own business.

“Like everyone, I have the occasional day when I think my head’s going to

blow off,” she says. Because of the growth phase, the business is in, Stoykov

has to concentrate on short-term stress relief – weekends in the mountains,

the occasional “mental health” day – rather than delegating more work. She

says: “We’re hiring more people, but you need to train them, teach them

about the culture and the clients, so it’s actually more work rather than less.”
D. Identify the causes: Jan Elsnera, Melbourne psychologist who specialises in executive

coaching, says thriving on a demanding workload is typical of senior executives and other high-

potential business people. She says there is no one-size-fits-all approach to stress: some people

work best with high-adrenalin periods followed by quieter patches, while others thrive under

sustained pressure. “We could take urine and blood hormonal measures and pass a judgment of

whether someone’s physiologically stressed or not,” she says. “But that’s not going to give us an

indicator of what their experience of stress is, and what the emotional and cognitive impacts of

stress are going to be.”

E. Eisner’s practice is informed by a movement known as positive

psychology, a school of thought that argues “positive” experiences – feeling

engaged, challenged, and that one is making a contribution to something

meaningful – do not balance out negative ones such as stress; instead, they
help people increase their resilience over time. Good stress, or positive

experiences of being challenged and rewarded, is thus cumulative in the same

way as bad stress. Elsner says many of the senior business people she

coaches are relying more on regulating bad stress through methods such as

meditation and yoga. She points to research showing that meditation can alter

the biochemistry of the brain and actually help people “retrain” the way their

brains and bodies react to stress. “Meditation and yoga enable you to shift the

way that your brain reacts, so if you get proficient at it you’re in control.”

F. The Australian vice-president of AT Kearney, Neil Plumridge, says:

“Often stress is caused by our setting unrealistic expectations of ourselves.

I’ll promise a client I’ll do something tomorrow, and then promise another

client the same thing, when I really know it’s not going to happen. I’ve put

stress on myself when I could have said to the clients: ‘Why don’t I give that

to you in 48 hours?’ The client doesn’t care.” Over-committing is something

people experience as an individual problem. We explain it as the result of

procrastination or Parkinson’s law that: work expands to fill the time

available. New research indicates that people may be hard-wired to do it.

shows that people always believe they will be less busy in the future than

now. This is a misapprehension, according to the authors of the report,

Professor Gal Zauberman, of the University of North Carolina, and Professor

John Lynch, of Duke University. “On average, an individual will be just as

busy two weeks or a month from now as he or she is today. But that is not

how it appears to be in everyday life,” they wrote. “People often make

commitments long in advance that they would never make if the same

commitments required immediate action. That is, they discount future time

investments relatively steeply.” Why do we perceive a greater “surplus” of

time in the future than in the present? The researchers suggest that people

underestimate completion times for tasks stretching into the future, and that

they are bad at imagining the future competition for their time.

Question 14-18

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with

opinions or deeds below.

Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

A)    Jan Elsnera

B)    Vanessa Stoykov

C)    Gal Zauberman

D)    Neil Plumridge

14. Work stress usually happens in the high level of a business.

15. More people’s ideas involved would be beneficial for stress relief.

16. Temporary holiday sometimes doesn’t mean less work.

17. Stress leads to a wrong direction when trying to satisfy customers.

18. It is not correct that stress in the future will be eased more than now.

Question 19-21

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write your answers in boxes 19-21 on your answer sheet.

Plumridge in the following options.

   A. Not enough time spend on family

   B. Unable to concentrate on work

   C. Inadequate time of sleep

   D. Alteration of appointment

20. Which of the following solution is NOT mentioned in helping reduce the

work pressure according to Plumridge.

   A. Allocate more personnel

   B. Increase more time

   C. Lower expectation

   D. Do sports and massage

21. What is point of view of Jan Elsnera towards work stress

   A. Medical test can only reveal part of the data needed to cope with stress
   B. Index somebody's samples will be abnormal in a stressful experience

   C. Emotional and cognitive affection is superior to physical one

   D. One well-designed solution can release all stress

Question 22-27

Complete the following summary.

Use NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each

answer.

Write your answers in boxes 22-27 on your answer sheet.

Statistics from National worker’s compensation indicate stress plays the most

important role in 22 ................. which cause the time losses. Staffs take

about 23 ................. for absence from work caused by stress. Not just time is

our main concern but great expenses generated consequently. An official

insurer wrote sometime that about 24 ................. of all claims were mental

issues whereas nearly 27% costs in all claims. Sports such as 25 ................. as

well as 26 ................. could be a treatment to release stress; However,

analyse 27 ................. once again.