A five-year-old exploring an area behind a shopping center in Mansfield, Texas has unearthed the fossilized bones of a 100 million-year-old nodosaur.

The animals lived in Europe, Asia, North America and Antarctica from the Late Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous Period. The squat but powerful armoured dinosaurs had horizontal rows of spikes along either side of their body and tail, but lacked a “tail club”.

Tim Brys, who works at the Dallas Zoo, was on a patch of land behind a grocery store with his son and initially didn’t know what it was that 5 year-old Wylie had found.

“My dad told me it was a turtle. But now he’s telling me it’s a dinosaur,” ,” Wylie in a statement through Southern Methodist University (SMU).

After the initial discovery, Brys kept digging. The area was underwater during the Jurassic period and he knew that marine fossils were sometimes found there.

“He walked up ahead of me and found a piece of bone. It was a pretty good size and I knew I had something interesting,” said Brys.

“Quite rare to find a dinosaur in this area,” said Michael Polcyn, Winkler’s colleague at SMU who described the nodosaur as “armored beach balls that floated out to sea.”

Because scientists can’t dig everywhere, a large number of discoveries in archeology and palaeontology are made by citizens digging in their back yards, empty lots, construction sites and while on vacation.

A surprising number of these people, perhaps due to their love of digging, are children.

In January a boy in Cape Egmont, Prince Edward Island, Canada found an entirely new species of dinosaur which now bears his name.

In November of 2014, 10-year-old Noah Cordle was on vacation in Long Beach Island when he found a 10,000 year old arrowhead.

In April, 2014 a nine-year-old in Michigan was walking along a creek bed and tripped over a 10,000 year old mastodon tooth.

In November of 2010, a 3 year old found a 16th century gold pendant worth $5 million on a British beach.

In April of 2009, 9-year-old Matthew Berger was chasing his dog, tripped over a log and discovered the bones of a new, 2 million year old hominid species.

In May of 2009, a pre-schooler out looking for “cool rocks” came across a piece of a 4,000 year old Native American fishing net.

In June of 2009, a four-year-old playing by the bank of the Teklanika River found a rare 1,100 year old barbed arrow head.

Those are just a few of the most recent discoveries, only discoveries made by children and only in the areas of palaeontology and archeology.

Citizen science is a hot topic these days but it seems that everyone has the potential to be a scientist, almost from birth, even if it is sometimes accidental.