Questões de Inglês

Read the text to answer question.

Early dinosaur relative walked like a croc

  One of the earliest relatives of dinosaurs had some features we associate today with crocodiles and alligators, a study suggests.

  Many palaeontologists have wondered what the earliest dinosaur relatives looked like, as the fossil record in this time period is sparse. Some assumed they walked on two legs, looking a bit like miniature dinosaurs. But the newly described creature walked on four legs like a croc, the journal Nature reports.

  The 2-3m (7-10ft) carnivorous animal, unearthed in southern Tanzania, lived some 245 million years ago during the Triassic Period. It pre-dated the earliest dinosaurs. Prof Paul Barrett, one of the authors on the new paper, said: “This is a little animal that we call Teleocrater. It’s not very big...it probably would have weighed about the same as the average family dog.”

  Teleocrater rhadinus appeared just after a large group of animals known as archosaurs split into one branch that led to dinosaurs, and another branch that led to today’s alligators and crocodiles. Its anatomy combines features present in the last common ancestor of these groups, such as a crocodilian-like ankle joint, with some features considered characteristic of dinosaurs.

  The first fossils belonging to Teleocrater were discovered in 1933 in Tanzania. They were studied at London’s Natural History Museum in the 1950s. But these specimens were missing crucial bones, such as the ankle. Therefore, scientists at the time could not tell whether they were more closely related to crocs or to dinosaurs.

  The new specimens were uncovered in the East African country in 2015, resolving some of those outstanding questions. They show that it is one of the earliest members of the archosaur family tree and that it walked like a crocodilian.

  Teleocrater, along with other dinosaur relatives, lived across a wide range of different regions, from Russia to India to Brazil. The team’s next steps are to return to southern Tanzania to look for more remains and missing pieces of the Teleocrater skeleton.

(Paul Rincon. www.bbc.com, 12.04.2017. Adaptado.)

O texto a seguir é referência para a questão.

Madina, Russia, 2013

  “These strange, feral children are often a source of shame and secrecy within a family or community”, writes MaryAnn Ochota on her website. “These aren’t Jungle Book stories, they’re often harrowing cases of neglect and abuse. And it’s all too likely because of a tragic combination of addiction, domestic violence and poverty. These are kids who fell through the cracks, who were forgotten, or ignored, or hidden”. According to Fullerton-Batten, “Madina lived with dogs from birth until she was three years old, sharing their food, playing with them, and sleeping with them when it was cold in winter. When social workers found her in 2013, she was naked, walking on all fours and growling like a dog. Madina’s father had left soon after her birth. Her mother, 23 years old, took to alcohol. She was frequently too drunk to look after for her child and… would sit at the table to eat while her daughter gnawed bones on the floor with the dogs”. Madina was taken into care and doctors found her to be mentally and physically healthy despite what she had been through.

(http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151012-feral-the-children-raised-by-wolves)

O texto a seguir é referência para a questão.

Madina, Russia, 2013

  “These strange, feral children are often a source of shame and secrecy within a family or community”, writes MaryAnn Ochota on her website. “These aren’t Jungle Book stories, they’re often harrowing cases of neglect and abuse. And it’s all too likely because of a tragic combination of addiction, domestic violence and poverty. These are kids who fell through the cracks, who were forgotten, or ignored, or hidden”. According to Fullerton-Batten, “Madina lived with dogs from birth until she was three years old, sharing their food, playing with them, and sleeping with them when it was cold in winter. When social workers found her in 2013, she was naked, walking on all fours and growling like a dog. Madina’s father had left soon after her birth. Her mother, 23 years old, took to alcohol. She was frequently too drunk to look after for her child and… would sit at the table to eat while her daughter gnawed bones on the floor with the dogs”. Madina was taken into care and doctors found her to be mentally and physically healthy despite what she had been through.

(http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151012-feral-the-children-raised-by-wolves)

O texto a seguir é referência para a questão.

Madina, Russia, 2013

  “These strange, feral children are often a source of shame and secrecy within a family or community”, writes MaryAnn Ochota on her website. “These aren’t Jungle Book stories, they’re often harrowing cases of neglect and abuse. And it’s all too likely because of a tragic combination of addiction, domestic violence and poverty. These are kids who fell through the cracks, who were forgotten, or ignored, or hidden”. According to Fullerton-Batten, “Madina lived with dogs from birth until she was three years old, sharing their food, playing with them, and sleeping with them when it was cold in winter. When social workers found her in 2013, she was naked, walking on all fours and growling like a dog. Madina’s father had left soon after her birth. Her mother, 23 years old, took to alcohol. She was frequently too drunk to look after for her child and… would sit at the table to eat while her daughter gnawed bones on the floor with the dogs”. Madina was taken into care and doctors found her to be mentally and physically healthy despite what she had been through.

(http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151012-feral-the-children-raised-by-wolves)

O texto a seguir é referência para a questão.

Bled by emigration, abandoned Portuguese villages lose hope of surviving

  The villages of Agracoes and Povoa de Agracoes in northern Portugal look little alike – one is a run-down cluster of dilapidated old stone houses, the other has a cosier feel, with a flowerbedecked wayside shrine and chapel.

  But the one thing they have in common is the “slow agony” of abandonment, as some villagers say.

  The steady drip-drip of emigration has brought down their numbers from more than 50 residents to fewer than a dozen each. These remaining villagers share the same glum acceptance that, after they have gone, their villages will die out too.

  It is the same desolate picture in scores of other backwater settlements in Portugal’s interior, north to south.

  There are no shops. A grocery truck comes once a week and elderly residents taxi pool to see a doctor miles away.

  “This place will get overgrown with woods for wildfires to burn, that’s what will happen... My daughters won’t come to live here, so my land will disappear”, said Antonio Goncalves Fontes, at 62 one of the youngest residents of Agracoes, where mountain waters gurgle next to crumbling stone houses.

  He and his wife Maria grow chestnuts, vegetables and have a small flock of sheep and five donkeys.

  Mass emigration to wealthier countries like France and Switzerland, high unemployment and poorly-paid local jobs, combined with falling birth rates, have caused some parishes like Loivos, which encompasses Agracoes, to lose about three-quarters of the population in the past few decades.

  The remote Trans-Mountain region of western Europe’s poorest country, near the Spanish border, is one of the worst affected. As the population has dwindled, schools and medical outposts have been shut down, causing a vicious circle of ever greater abandonment.

(http://www.reuters.com/article/us-portugal-villages-widerimage-idUSKCN0XP1HC)

O texto a seguir é referência para a questão.

Bled by emigration, abandoned Portuguese villages lose hope of surviving

  The villages of Agracoes and Povoa de Agracoes in northern Portugal look little alike – one is a run-down cluster of dilapidated old stone houses, the other has a cosier feel, with a flowerbedecked wayside shrine and chapel.

  But the one thing they have in common is the “slow agony” of abandonment, as some villagers say.

  The steady drip-drip of emigration has brought down their numbers from more than 50 residents to fewer than a dozen each. These remaining villagers share the same glum acceptance that, after they have gone, their villages will die out too.

  It is the same desolate picture in scores of other backwater settlements in Portugal’s interior, north to south.

  There are no shops. A grocery truck comes once a week and elderly residents taxi pool to see a doctor miles away.

  “This place will get overgrown with woods for wildfires to burn, that’s what will happen... My daughters won’t come to live here, so my land will disappear”, said Antonio Goncalves Fontes, at 62 one of the youngest residents of Agracoes, where mountain waters gurgle next to crumbling stone houses.

  He and his wife Maria grow chestnuts, vegetables and have a small flock of sheep and five donkeys.

  Mass emigration to wealthier countries like France and Switzerland, high unemployment and poorly-paid local jobs, combined with falling birth rates, have caused some parishes like Loivos, which encompasses Agracoes, to lose about three-quarters of the population in the past few decades.

  The remote Trans-Mountain region of western Europe’s poorest country, near the Spanish border, is one of the worst affected. As the population has dwindled, schools and medical outposts have been shut down, causing a vicious circle of ever greater abandonment.

(http://www.reuters.com/article/us-portugal-villages-widerimage-idUSKCN0XP1HC)