Removing a rat's hippocampus 48 hours after it learns the location of some tasty food does not prevent it from forming a long-term memory of where the food is located.
this best illustrates the importance of:

a) the encoding specificity principle.
b) state-dependent memory.
c) memory consolidation.
d) the serial position effect.

(C) Memory consolidation

Explanation:

 The memory consolidation is the process that stabilizes the memory trace and by using this process the memory can easily be retrieved when it is actually needed.

The memory consolidation is also known as the time-dependent process in which the recent learning process are automatically get transformed into the long term memory.

According to the given scenario, the given situation best illustrated the importance of the memory consolidation as it using the long term memory.

Therefore, Option (C) is correct.