10．
Choose the best answer.
In the
1920s, scientists found a collection of bones near Beijing. China. They be-levied
that the bones were human and that they were about 500,000 years old. They also
believed the bones were important because they were from a little-known stage
in the evolution of human beings.
The bones
were kept in Beijing until 1941. Then because the Japanese army was advancing
towards the city, the scientists decided to send the bones to the US for
safety.
Dr Harry
L. Shapiro, former Professor of Anthropology(人类学)
at Columbia University, has been searching for them ever since. He believes
they were stolen by the American army officer whose job was to take them to the
US. He could be right.
After the
war, a Chicago businessman offered $ 5,000 to anybody with information about
the bones. A woman phoned him and told him she knew where the bones were. He
arranged to meet her on the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building in New
York. They met and she told him that her husband had come home from China with
fossils(化石) of a prehistoric(of the time before recorded
history) man. She showed him photographs of them. Then she walked away and was
never heard from again.
A few
years later, however, a Sydney businessman reported that he had the hopes and
that he had buried them in a forest in Tasmania. He offered to say where for a
large sum of money. Then he, too, was never heard from again. Someone, some
where, has the bones but nobody seems to know who or where.
