A young boy from England found a shiny item on a beach that turned out to be a "rare" ancient item dating back to the late Middle Paleolithic era. 

The boy — identified by Worthing Museum as Ben Witten, now 9 years old — discovered a shiny rock at Shoreham Beach in Sussex.

"I was looking around and I saw this shiny flint rock. I just thought it looked different [from] all the other different pebbles and stones," he told the BBC. 

Over the next few years, Witten said he kept the shiny rock in his room.

He told the BBC he was constantly "losing it and finding it."