求助：rather than 与 instead of 的区别？avoid后面加什么？

复活节彩蛋

经常有题目会出到这个，例：

Recently discovered fossil remains strongly suggest that the Australian egg-laying mammals of today are a branch of the main stem of mammalian evolution rather than developing independently from a common ancestor of mammals more than 220 million years ago.
A) rather than developing independently from
B) rather than a type that developed independently from
C) rather than a type whose development was independent of
D) instead of developing independently from
E) instead of a development that was independent of

此题选B，但是我选的是E。
主要疑问就rather than 与 instead of 的区别是什么？

还有一问，就是avoid 后面加什么？avoid from？ avoid to？在什么情况下加哪个？

wjtwenzi

GMAT语法中优先选择rather than而不是instead of，因为instead of有很多限制

AMBER513

[rather than & instead of] OG VERBAL REVIEW 2 – Q#52https://forum.chasedream.com/for ... amp;fromuid=1396486(出处: https://forum.chasedream.com/)
版主可以看看这个帖子

AMBER513

The "of" in "instead of" is a preposition, and its object must be a noun.  Thus, "instead of" can only be used to compare single nouns, and the GMAT Sentence Correction seems to avoid even this use.  The GMAT also seems to avoid the "instead of" [gerund] structure.   The "than" in "rather than" is a subordinate clause, so the structure "rather than" is considerably more flexible in what can follow it.