This is the astonishing moment a five-year-old boy unearthed a 500-million-year-old fossil while accompanying his dad on a hike.

Phone footage captured by his dad, surnamed Yang, shows the little boy, dressed in a red jacket, excitedly pointing to the fossil among a pile of rocks near the Langgong Temple in Linyi, in Shandong Province, eastern China.

Yang said his son made the unexpected discovery while the two were hiking on a small nearby hill on November 19.

After his son pointed towards the strange patterns in the stones, Yang said he realised they bore a striking resemblance to a fossilised trilobite, an extinct marine arthropod.

Yang said: 'I told my son that this place might have fossils.

'After searching for seven or eight minutes, my son shouted that he found something.

When I went over, I saw that the whole area was filled with fossils with strange patterns.'

Professor Guo Ying of the Institute of Geology and Paleontology at Linyi University later verified the discovery.

He added the location where they made the prehistoric find is believed to belong to the strata of the Cambrian or Ordovician period, dating back over 500 million years ago.

The Natural Resources and Planning Bureau of Lanling County later sent out experts to examine the rocks.

However, staff said due to them being very soft and brittle, it would be extremely challenging to extract intact fossil pieces.

The bureau said: 'Five hundred million years ago, this area was the seabed, leaving behind many trilobite fossils like this one.

'This fossil is very brittle, not more than one centimetre [0.3 inches] thick, easily breaking upon touch, and it has no (research) value.'