Analyzing How Ideas are Developed and Refined in "Nobel Goes for Developing Drugs from Nature"
Coquina - The Rock that Saved St Augustine
from National Park Service
The adaptation of new raw materials was an
ongoing challenge for the Europeans who came to
the New World. In this essay, the author describes
how the discovery of a new building material was
used to construct an old building type, and in the
process, helped the Spanish maintain their hold on
Florida.
A Fort Made Out of Seashells?
(1) Who would think that a fort made of seashells
would last 300 years? Who would think that a fort
made out of seashells would last three days under
cannon fire? But the Castillo de San Marcos, made
of local coquina stone, did just that. What exactly is
this strange rock? How was it formed, and where
did it come from? And how did this rock shape the
history of St. Augustine?

Which detail from the passage strengthens the author's idea that coquina stone was a historically significant finding?
A. Instead of shattering, the coquina stone merely compresses and absorbs the shock of the hit. The cannon balls just bounce off or sink in a few inches.
B. This material "glued" the shell fragments together into a porous type of limestone we now call coquina, which is Spanish for "tiny shell
C. Since no one has ever built a fort or any large building out of coquina, they have no idea how strong it would be.
D. Thousands of years ago, the tiny coquina clam (donax variabilis) lived in the shallow waters of coastal Florida, as they still do today. These are the small pink, lavender, yellow, or white shells one sees along the beach at the waterline.