Word: graveled
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...first Englishman" was first heard from in 1911 when Charles Dawson, lawyer and amateur anthropologist, unearthed skull fragments and part of a jaw in a gravel pit near Piltdown in Sussex. The skull was obviously human, but the apeishness of the jaw made some authorities suspicious. Others accepted both as genuine. In honor of Finder Dawson they labeled Piltdown man Eoanthropus (dawn man) dawsoni. To some anthropologists, who often jump to conclusions as quickly as a monkey jumps on a banana, the contrast between the skull and the jaw all but "proved" him to be a link connecting apes...
...with potassium bichromate and an iron salt to make it look old, and its teeth had been pared to make them look more or less human. Unanswered still was the question of who had planted the fake. Dawson, who died in 1916 and whose monument stands near the Piltdown gravel pit, may have doctored the jawbone to make himself famous. More likely, the difficult hoax was perpetrated by an erudite joker who enjoyed in silent satisfaction his success in fooling the experts...
...Clark satisfied himself that he had found, on the banks of the Chiriaca River, a far western tributary of the Amazon, a reasonable facsimile of El Dorado. There, he traded all his spare equipment for 50 Ibs. of gold dust and nuggets sifted from the river gravel by friendly headhunters. On the journey out of the jungle, he and his companion were forced to bury about half the gold because it was too heavy to carry farther. Living comfortably in San Francisco now, Clark has never gone back to pick...
Oakley explained that the basis of calling the skull a fraud was the discovery that the ape-like "Piltdown" jaw is actually that of a modern ape which had been treated with a chemical to make it appear a "fossil." When found in a Piltdown, England, gravel pit in 1911, the shape of the jaw led scientists to call it at least 100,000 and possibly 600,000 years old. The cranium itself is a genuine fossil, but the scientists now say it is only 50,000 years...
...still twanging from the trip, Darby finished his note. He wrote: "I'm typing this in the waiting room of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad depot, the typewriter on a chair beside a potbellied stove. The temperature is a cool 66°; a mile up a dusty gravel road, the President is enjoying some fishing. Western Union Morse circuits are tapping away in the next room on press stories and White House messages. I've bought some levis and heavy flannel shirts. I'm assured that a six-gun is not really necessary...