A holidaymaker and his dog found more than just shells while strolling on a beach when they discovered a two-million-year-old elephant bone.

Dennis Smith and his dog, Daisy, made the discovery last week while taking a morning walk at Dunwich, in Suffolk.

Mr Smith, of Chelmer Road in Witham, said: "We got some way up the beach and something was sticking out of the sand.

"I realised what it was straight away. It is huge."

The section of leg bone is about 13 inches long and weighs about six kilograms, the same as Daisy, a miniature wire-haired dachshund.

The 69-year-old grandfather set about finding out more about his discovery. He was put in touch with Bob Markham, a retired geology curator, who said the bone was about two million years old and appeared to be from a southern elephant, an ancestor of the woolly mammoth.

Mr Markham said it was not uncommon to find fragments of bone from these creatures in Suffolk, and that southern elephants were first found in Britain about 2 million years ago, in the Felixstowe area.

In the meantime, he still has the mammoth bone and has asked his local school, Powers Hall Junior School, if it would like to use the bone for a history lesson.