QUESTION

CAN somebody tell me if this is correct?

Another major discovery was made in Egypt in 1989. Several skeletons of another
early whale, Basilosaurus, were found in sediments left by the Tethys Sea and now
exposed in the Sahara desert. This whale lived around 40 million years ago, 12 million
years after Pakicetus. Many incomplete skeletons were found but they included, for
the first time in an archaeocyte, a complete hind leg that features a foot with three tiny
toes. (Such legs would have been far too small to have supported the 50-foot-long
Basilosaurus on land. Basilosaurus was undoubtedly a fully marine whale with possibly
nonfunctional, or vestigial, hind legs.)
The fossil consists of a complete skull of an archaeocyte, an extinct group of ancestors
of modern cetaceans. Although limited to a skull, the Pakicetus fossil provides
precious details on the origins of cetaceans. The skull is cetacean-like but its jawbones
lack the enlarged space that is filled with fat or oil and used for receiving underwater
sound in modern whales. Pakicetus probably detected sound through the ear opening
as in land mammals. The skull also lacks a blowhole, another cetacean adaptation for
diving. Other features, however, show experts that Pakicetus is a transitional form between
a group of extinct flesh-eating mammals, the mesonychids, and cetaceans. It
has been suggested that Pakicetus fed on fish in shallow water and was not yet
adapted for life in the open ocean. It probably bred and gave birth on land.

3. The word precious in the passage
is closest in meaning to
exact
scarce
(X)valuable
initial

7. The hind leg of Basilosaurus was
a significant find because it showed
that Basilosaurus
lived later than Ambulocetus natans
lived at the same time as Pakicetus
was able to swim well
(X)could not have walked on land

8. It can be inferred that Basilosaurus
bred and gave birth in which of the
following locations?
On land
Both on land and at sea
In shallow water
(X) In a marine environment

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF VESTIGIAL? = a remnant (or 'nonfunctional' as is earlier written). For example, humans have vestigial tails growing from their lower backbones. The tails are 'nonfunctional' or don't work. Sometimes, in human mutations, the tails grow further; then they are not vestigial. 7: X is therefore right. It could not have walked on land because its back legs were vestigial and not able to walk. 8. is maybe contradictory: it cannot go on land because of its legs, yet 'was undoubtedly a fully marine whale' (=somehow was marine??=capable of living on land and water). For 8, it is safer to say 'on land'.