The fingernail-sized sliver of basalt is ground smooth at one end and appears to date from 44 to 49,000 years ago.

This is not long after humans first settled Australia - and several thousand years earlier than previous, similar ground-stone discoveries.

The findings appear in the journal Australian Archaeology.

Although much older "hand axes", usually made of flint, have been found across Europe and Africa - one well-known example found on a Norfolk beach is thought to be 700,000 years old - those were very different tools.

Axe blades made from harder stone, painstakingly battered into blades, are known from sites in several discrete locations around the globe including northern Asia, the Americas - and Australia.

Archaeologists have deduced that they were usually attached to a handle to form a tool much like a hatchet. Such implements are often associated with the development of agriculture but ancient examples from Australia vastly pre-date agriculture anywhere in the world - and this latest fragment is even a good 10,000 years older than similar finds in the far north of the continent.

(BBC News)