A rare ammonite fossil approximately 75 million years old has been discovered in eastern Saskatchewan.

One of the residents of the village of Frobisher was building a stone drainage system in his backyard when he found the artifact.

Bob Steiman, a resident of Frobisher, explained: "The rock was cracked like this when I found it; I was looking for the other half and couldn't find it."

"I tossed it aside and didn't think anything of it. About four days later, my wife was outside, and I told her to pick it up and take a look at it; she thought it was a fossil. That's when we decided we would have it examined."

Steiman first contacted the Royal Alberta Museum for more information and was shocked when he discovered the age of the piece. He then reached out to the regional museum due to the fossil being found in Saskatchewan.

Ryan McKellar, a paleontology curator at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum (RSM), referred to the new discovery: "This belongs to a group called ammonites, which are squid-like animals."

"Their modern relatives resemble the nautilus. They have these large coiled shells, or straight shells, and there is an animal that resembles a squid living in the last chamber. They still have relatives today."

McKellar stated that the fossil is a shell of a marine species that went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period.

McKellar clarified: "Shells are somewhat more common when we encounter them in the field, although this specific type of shell is a relatively rare specimen in Saskatchewan."

"We have hundreds and hundreds of top collections of ammonites; we have only 19 of this specific group of ammonites, so it is a unique addition to the RSM collection."

Currently, the museum's collection of ammonites dates back to the 1920s and 1950s, making Steiman's discovery a unique addition to the collection.

Now that he knows the age of the cracked rock he found in his backyard, Steiman plans to donate it to the RSM.