Beach walker picks up something in sand and is blown away when he realises what it is

Beaches are wonderful places for exploring. You can find all sorts - from seashells, sea glass and driftwood, to marine life like sarfish and crabs. If you're lucky, you might even find find some really old treasure from long ago.

But when one beach walker picked up an item from the beach, he was left absolutely stunned by what it turned out to be, as it wasn't what he was expecting. Scott loves hunting for treasures on beaches, has been doing it for over eight years, and often documents his incredible finds on his @discovering_undiscovered TikTok page.

Scott, who lives on the Holderness Coast in Yorkshire, shared a clip from one of his recent trips to the beach. Picking up what looked like a rock in the sand, he said: "I've found something here which I think could potentially be a fossil. These are what are called cannonball nodules because they look like cannonballs. Sometimes they have something inside, sometimes they don't. More often they don't."

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Cannonball nodules are large, spherical concretions, or rock, that sometimes contain a fossilised creature, such as an ammonite inside.

The Yorkshireman then proceeded to split it open with a hammer, and he was absolutely gobsmacked by what he saw. Scott exclaimed: "Oh, no way! Look at that. That is insane."

Inside was a perfectly formed fossil, which is the preserved remains of an ancient organism that lived a long time ago - often more than 10,000 years - sometimes as old as 4 billion years. He added: "I was literally not expecting that."

Explaining exactly what it was, Scott said: "A 190 million year old fossil ammonite called Eleganticeras. It swam in the sea back when the dinosaurs were around."

People in the comment section were equally amazed by his fine. "This is so cool," said one social media user. Another added: "So cool! Also loved your joyful face. Made me smile too!"

Elsewhere, someone asked him how he knows he's picking up a fossil and "not just a big stone". Scott explained: "I'd be a millionaire if I had £1 for every time I got asked that. Alot of it is trial and error but after eight years your brain gets really good at it, you can go over thousands of rocks and pick a few out which could be potentials, sometimes it's the size of the rock, the colour, the shape.

"Anybody can go out and do it and get lucky, but most will find obvious looking ones, they'll find it very difficult to find things when there is no obvious signs on the outside and that's what I seem to excel at - x-ray vision."