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A recent study has provided clues to predator-prey dynamics in the late Pleistocene era. Researchers compared the number of 1. The primary purpose of the passage is to tooth fractures in present-day carnivores with tooth fractures in carnivores that lived 36,000 to 10,000 years ago and that were ▪ (A) present several ex nations for a p in the Rancho La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles. The well-known fact breakage frequencies in the ext t species were strikingly higher than those in the present-day species. ▪ (B) suggest alternative methods for onsidering possible ex nations for this finding, the resolving a debate researchers dismissed demographic bias because older individuals were not overrepresented in the fossil samples. ▪ (C) argue in favor of a controversial They rejected preservational bias because a total absence of theory breakage in two ext t species demonstrated that the fractures were not the result of abrasion within the pits. They ruled out ▪ (D) question the methodology used in a local bias because breakage data obtained from other study Pleistocene sites were similar to the La Brea data. The ex nation they consider most usible is behavioral ▪ (E) discuss the implications of a research differences between ext t and present-day carnivores--in particular, more contact between the teeth of predators and the finding bones of prey due to more thorough consumption of carcasses by the ext t species. Such thorough carcass consumption implies to the researchers either that prey availability was low, at least seasonally, or that there was intense competition over kills and a high rate of carcass theft due to relatively high predator densities. A recent study