By NewsGram Staff Writer

A five-year-old boy has unearthed what scientists believe to be a 100-million-year-old dinosaur, behind a local shopping complex in Texas.

The rare fossil was found last year by Wylie Brys while digging with his father Tim Brys to find remnants of marine life which were underwater during the Jurassic Period.

The discovery took place on a patch of land behind a shopping centre in Mansfield last September.

Tim Brys, a worker at Dallas Zoo said, "He (Wylie) walked up ahead of me and found a piece of bone. It was a pretty good size and I knew I had something interesting."

Scientists from the Southern Methodist University (SMU) helped extract the fossil and believe it could be the land-dwelling pony-sized creature, Nodosaur.

According to reports from Dallas News, the fossils have been placed in burlap and plaster to create a protective shell around the bones.

They will be transmitted to SMU for further cleaning where scientists will try to assemble the bones and study the fossil.