Jajpur: Fossils of an ancient animal have been found near a Buddhist monument site at Radha Nagar village under Dharmasala block in the district.

Local people discovered the fossils of the animal while digging a pit to collect earth from a field at the village on Sunday. A local villager first spotted the fossils from the dug-up pit and collected the same from there, sources said.

The field-digging was going on at the village to facilitate repairing of the embankment of Kelua river, a branch of the Brahmani. After digging up to 35ft deep in the field, the local people discovered the fossils of the rare animal.

"While workers were digging the field with the help of a machine, I was standing by there on Sunday noon. Suddenly, I spotted the rock-like pieces under the earth and took them to my house," said Mahendra Kumar Malik, a youth of Bamphu village.

Malik then showed it to the local researcher, Nrusingha Charan Sahoo, who said the rocklike antiquity was an ancient animal's fossils.

"The rare animal is believed to have existed thousands of years ago on the earth," said Sahoo.

"It takes thousands of years for a carcass to turn into fossil. These fossils, discovered from Radha Nagar, have already turned into rock-like objects," he said.

Sahoo said that as of now, he could not ascertain the exact age of the fossils and to which animal it belongs to. "An anthropologist can better answer all these questions," he said.