Roman egg found in Aylesbury still has contents after 1,700 years

The egg is one of four that were found alongside a woven basket, pottery vessels, leather shoes and animal bone in 2010. Photograph: Oxford Archaeology

It was a wonderful find as it was, a cache of 1,700-year-old speckled chicken eggs discovered in a Roman pit during a dig in Buckinghamshire.

But to the astonishment of archaeologists and naturalists, a scan has revealed that one of the eggs recovered intact still has liquid – thought to be a mix of yolk and albumen – inside it, and may give up secrets about the bird that laid it almost two millennia ago.