Foreign guests from     1     (participate) countries of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) spoke highly     2     Chinese cultural relics, after they     3     (pay) a visit to the Sanxingdui Museum in Sichuan Province on Sunday. The guests,     4     are also representatives of the first Silk Road Global News Awards winners, agreed on promoting     5     (culture) exchanges in future cooperation.     6     (discover) in the late 1920s, the Sanxingdui site was considered as the     7     (large) ancient kingdom site from the pre-Qin period in Southwest China. In 1986 and 2019,     8     total of eight sacrificial pits were discovered at Sanxingdui. They held     9     (near) 20,000 precious cultural relics     10     they made the site one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in modern times.

On the north bank of Fuxian Lake in Chengjiang County, Yunnan Province sits a straw-hat-shaped mountain     1     (call) Maotian Mountain,     2     a 512-hectare site is praised as a “world-class treasure trove of fossils” by the international scientific community. On July 1,1984, young paleontologists in China discovered a fossil of the arthropod (节肢动物化石) with a long tail in Maotian Mountain. “    3     we had studied in China were just shell of fossils. The arthropods, lifelike fossils with legs, which belonged to fossils of soft-bodied animals, are     4     game changer in the research of China’s paleontology (古生物学)”, Hou Xianguang, a paleontologist said.

Scientists have obtained a large number of research results on Chengjiang Fossil Site. The reason why Chengjiang fauna (动物群) is     5     great significance is that it is closely related to the emergence of the animal tree of life.

Up to now, more than 20 phyla and more than 280 species     6     (record)in the Chengjiang Fossil Site, of which, 80% are new species. On July 1, 2012, the Chengjiang Fossil Site     7     (be) inscribed on the World Heritage List by UNESCO,     8     (become) China’ s first World Heritage Site for paleontological fossils.

The UNESCO evaluation says the Chengjiang Fossil Site is one of the     9     (early) records of a complex marine ecosystem of the early Cambrian communities. The property displays excellent quality of fossil     10     (preserve). It presents an exceptional record of the rapid diversification of life on Earth during the early Cambrian period.

4 . The researchers say they have discovered two huge magma chambers (岩浆库) under Wei Mountain in Heilongjiang. If it is true, it will be a surprising discovery since the volcano last erupted over 500,000 years ago.

Zhang Haijiang and his team visited nearly 100 sites across Wei Mountain. They were looking for magma, and they found an unusual signal from 15km underground, followed by another one at 8km. Their computer modelling suggested there could be two huge magma chambers with a depth of more than 9km. According to their research, 15 percent of the upper chamber is now filled with molten (熔化的) rock. Some studies have suggested that a volcanic eruption could take place when a chamber is filled to 40 percent magma.

They suggested that the volcanic activity in northeast China is likely to be in an active stage, and the active volcanic monitoring is needed to further understand the magma system in this area.

Xu Jiandong, director of the volcanic research, said seismic (地震的) stations had been monitoring this area for many years. "If there are really huge magma chambers in the area, we should have found some related seismic activities—When the lower chamber fills the upper one, there should be some movement," he said. "But so far, after decades of monitoring on the site, we've picked up almost nothing. The whole area has been very, very quiet," he added.

So did the researchers really find huge magma chambers? While the unusual signals found by Zhang's team looked like magma chambers, they could also have been caused by other things.

But what is for sure is that the area is active. It's like porridge boiling in a pot. But since the studies in recent years have suggested a low risk of immediate eruption in the area, the government has not set up seismic stations around. And it is certain that they aren't prepared for a big eruption over there.

5 . Born into poverty on 21 May 1799, Mary Anning had to work hard from a young age. Her parents had 10 children, of whom only two survived childhood --- Mary and her elder brother Joseph. Mary’s own survival was said by her parents to be a wonder. At the age of 15 months, a sudden rainstorm hit the shelter, where Mary, her babysitter, and two children stayed. A lightning strike killed them all except Mary.

She didn’t have formal education and was only taught to read at a Sunday school. Raised in the seaside holiday village of Lyme Regis in Dorset, Mary and Joseph made a living by selling fossils to holidaymakers at their father’s waterfront booth.

Her life changed in 1811 when Joseph noticed bones mixed together with rock. Unknown to them, this was the first ever discovery of an ichthyosaurus ( 鱼 龙 ), a marine lizard from the Triassic period. Anning noted down every find she made, and after failing to find any new fossils for over a year, in 1821 she made her next discovery, digging up three more ichthyosaur skeletons. This was followed two years later by an even more impressive find --- a complete plesiosaur(蛇颈龙). This was so extraordinary that many leading scientists declared it a counterfeit, unwilling to believe that an uneducated 24-year-old could find such remarkable remains. Additionally, society at the time was highly religious and many rejected these discoveries as they conflicted with the teachings of the Bible.

Despite the setback, Anning continued to make more shocking revelations. Anning also dug up fossilized shit, which made experts know the diets of prehistoric creatures. But her biggest find of all was the first complete skeleton of a pterosaur in 1828.

All of Mary Anning’s discoveries helped influence the study of paleontology(古生物学) as scientists began to take an increased interest in fossilized animals and plants. Her work also encouraged people to question the history of the Earth in more detail and encouraged girls and those from poor backgrounds by proving that they could succeed in scientific study, a profession mainly controlled by wealthy upper-class men.

6 . An ancient tomb was recently discovered in southern Siberia in which there may be treasure, priceless objects, and the 3, 000-year-old remains of an ice mummy.

Swiss scientist Gino Caspari with the University of Bern was looking carefully at the pictures of the area in the Russian Tuva Republic, when he came across what appeared to be a tomb. It is a tomb of the Scythians, an ancient group of Eurasians.

This summer, together with researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Hermitage Museum, a dig at the site not only proved Caspari's idea, but told us the site is the largest and oldest of its kind ever discovered in what's increasingly known as the “Siberian Valley of the Kings.”

While any discovery dating back to a period between the Iron Age and Bronze Age is exciting, it's the nature of this site that makes scientists want to begin carefully clearing away the layers of rock and earth. First, the tomb appears to have never been dug, because it is in a Siberian wetland faraway from the nearest place where people live. Second, and most important, is its possible resting place under a thick layer of permafrost.

“There's permafrost in the area,” Caspari said. “There are really only a handful of permafrost tombs and very few that have not been damaged, where there have been ice mummies in good condition, and all the things in the tomb are untouched.”

While not as large, other tombs discovered in the area have produced fantastical treasures and objects, including thousands of gold objects and other things about the past. By studying all these tombs, researchers hope to have a better understanding of the Scythian people.

Caspari said his team is in a race against time to uncover the tomb and find out its secrets. “We now have to act fast,” he said, “because with the rising temperatures, the permafrost could melt and damage all the things in that tomb. And these are things that are over 3,000 years old, that look like new, like they were put there yesterday.”