Steak Dinners Go Back 2.5 Million Years

The discovery of a new "missing link" species of bull dating to a million years ago in Eritrea pushes back the beef steak dinner to the very dawn of humans and cattle.

Although there is no evidence that early humans were actually herding early cattle 2.5 million years ago, the early humans and early cattle certainly shared the same landscape and beef was definitely on the menu all along, say researchers.

The telltale fossil is a skull with enormous horns that belongs to the cattle genus Bos. It has been reassembled from over a hundred shards found at a dig that also contains early human remains.

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Medieval Bridges preserved with Sugar

Scientists have used 70 tons of liquid sugar to preserve the remains of three Medieval bridges found near Leicester. Experts from the University of Leicester immersed the 11th century bridges – whose ruins were so heavy they had to be carried in sections by eight-man teams – in tanks of sugar solution.

Leicestershire County Council persuaded British Sugar to provide the sticky haul in three huge delivery batches after a retired local GP found the fragile 11th century timbers in Hemington Quarry near Castle Donington in 1993.

"Securing the viability of the bridge is testament to the natural preservative qualities of sugar," said Dr Julian Cooper, head of food science at British Sugar.

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Emotional Bunny Says: "Yes, I know we're out of sugar for the coffee, but we only have an hour of traveling left - NO! YOU CAN'T EAT THE BRIDGES!!"

(Image credit: trekearth.com)

Ancient Tablets Decoded; Shed Light on Assyrian Empire

Meticulous ancient notetakers have given archaeologists a glimpse of what life was like 3,000 years ago in the Assyrian Empire, which controlled much of the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. Clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform, an ancient script once common in the Middle East, were unearthed in summer 2009 in an ancient palace in present-day southeastern Turkey.

Palace scribes jotted down seemingly mundane state affairs on the tablets during the Late Iron Age—which lasted from roughly the end of the ninth century B.C. until the mid-seventh century B.C.

But these everyday details, now in the early stages of decoding, may open up some of the inner workings of the Assyrian government—and the people who toiled in the empire, experts say.

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Vanished Persian Army Said Found in Desert

Bones, jewelry and weapons found in Egyptian desert may be the remains of Cambyses' army that vanished 2,500 years ago.

The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology's biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.

Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.

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