GRE Reading Comprehension
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Source: CHP
Biologists have long maintained that two groups of pinnipeds, sea lions and walruses, are descended from a terrestrial bearlike animal, whereas the remaining group, seals, shares an ancestor with weasels. But the recent discovery of detailed similarities in the skeletalstructure of the flippers in all three groups undermines the attempt to explain away superficial resemblance asdue to convergent evolution—the independent develop-ment of similarities between unrelated groups in response to similar environmental pressures. Flippers may indeed be a necessary response to aquatic life; turtles, whales, and dugongs also have them. But the common detailed design found among the pinnipeds probably indicates a common ancestor. Moreover, walruses and seals drive themselves through the water with thrusts of their hind flippers, but sea lions usetheir front flippers. If anatomical similarity in the flippers resulted from similar environmental pressures, as posited by the convergent-evolution theory, one would expect walruses and seals, but not seals and sealions, to have similar flippers.
Select the sentence in the passage in which the authorshows that the implication of the common view iscontradicted by a new finding.