The first story is at www.dailygalaxy.com of May 1st (direct link does not work so go to site and trawl down menu) … satellite images have revealed an ancient network of rivers and streams in the Arabian desert, indicating the region was much wetter in the past – as we already know. However, it is not the first half of the Holocene that interests anthropologists and geologists at the moment, but Arabia during the Pleistocene and the assumed passage of humans Out of Africa. The study is planned to take place over a 5 year period, mapping water courses and excavating the odd site (but probably not in Saudi) and recording rock art and fossils etc.
The other story is at http://phys.org/print254475456.html and concerns an early horse and the uplift of the Tibetan plateau (again). In this article we are back in the Pliocene, that enigmatic period of time that was warmer than today, we are informed, in selective locations no doubt, and ended with the onset of the glacial era. Up on the Tibnetan plateau however it was a temperate climate as horses tend to be found on savannah grasslands, or steppe – so was the plateau as high as today, the theory, or is the Chinese research mentioned last week the truer version of events of a geological nature?