BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The following are highlights of China's key news on archaeology from the past week:
-- Top 10 archaeological discoveries in China published
One of the discoveries is a site of remains dating back 10,000 to 25,000 years found in caves in Qingtang Town in southern China's Guangdong Province, including fossils of human bones and cooking sites.
Another discovery, a shipwreck, is confirmed to be the warship Jingyuan sunk by the Japanese navy during the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), in northeast China's Liaoning Province. The list was released on Friday by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.
-- Unlaid egg in a dinosaur-era bird
A fossil bird dating back about 110 million years is found to have an unlaid egg in its abdomen. The incredibly well-preserved fossil was discovered in Yumen City, northwest China's Gansu Province by a research team from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The fossil represents a new species, Avimaia schweitzerae, belonging to a group called the Enantiornithes which was abundant around the world and co-existed with dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period.
The research indicates the bird's reproductive system was not behaving normally, a condition that occurred in living birds as a result of stress, said Alida Bailleul, the first author of the article.
-- Unbroken "thousand-year eggs" found in a Chinese tomb
Researchers from Nanjing Museum's Institute of Archaeology unearthed a jar filled with eggs, with only one broken, from a 2,500-year-old tomb in Shangxing Township, east China's Jiangsu Province.
The egg white and yolk have largely decomposed, but via DNA tests researchers will be able to identify whether they were pickled, said Lin Liugen, head of the Institute of Archaeology.
The funerary objects may reflect religious beliefs or simply habits -- the tomb owner might have enjoyed eating eggs and decided to keep this penchant alive after death.
It was not the first time eggs were found in ancient Chinese tombs, but the discovery of a jar of unbroken eggs is rare, as scientists say it is difficult for eggshells to remain intact for so long.
-- Neolithic jade workshop identified in east China
A 100-hectare site in east China's Zhejiang Province is found to be a Neolithic jade workshop dating back 4,500 to 4,800 years.
The Zhongchuming site in the village of Yangdun in Deqing County is the largest discovered jade workshop complex from the Liangzhu culture, best known for its exquisite jade carvings, according to the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.
About 1,600 pieces of raw jade and over 200 finished and semi-finished jade products, including defective ones, were unearthed from a dumping site of the jade workshop, which was built on a mound.