Reading Comprehension — Passage 1
Questions 11–15 are based on the passage below.
Peer review of the fossil record has repeatedly confirmed that whales descend from land-dwelling, four-legged mammals, a conclusion that seemed almost absurd when first proposed but is now supported by an unusually complete transitional sequence. Pakicetus, one of the earliest known whale ancestors, resembled a wolf-sized land mammal with functional legs, yet its inner ear already showed specialized structures found only in whales, hinting at an aquatic lifestyle despite its terrestrial build. Later forms such as Ambulocetus retained limbs capable of walking but show clear adaptations for swimming, including a flexible spine suited to an otter-like undulating stroke. By the time of Dorudon, some ten million years after Pakicetus, the hind limbs had shrunk to tiny, functionally useless nubs, fully external evidence of an internal skeleton no longer needed for locomotion but not yet eliminated by natural selection. Modern whales retain these vestigial pelvic bones as a genetic echo of that transition, floating disconnected within their body wall, evolution's incomplete erasure of a body plan its owners no longer require.