TEN thousand years of history has been unearthed by a history student who had a lucky brush with his favourite subject.

Alf Hall, who studies history at Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, in Darlington, was walking his dog when a long-buried treasure caught his eye.

The teenager said: "I was walking my dog when I noticed the top of the horn sticking out of the side of the riverbed during a time of drought in the Yorkshire Dales.

"I pulled it out, only to discover this magnificent, prehistoric looking artefact.

"After it had dried, around two days later, it revealed the membranes inside and this is when I realised it had to be something dating back to at least the Bronze Age."

Experts at the Natural History Museum in London confirmed that the horn once belonged to an auroch – an extinct species of large cattle, similar to bison, which roamed through Europe, Asia and North Africa until the 1600s.

After being professionally identified and dated back 10,000 years, Alf, who found the horn at the River Ure in Wensleydale, took it into college to show his peers and tutors.