A Colorado eighth-grader found a Tyrannosaurus rex tooth while on a hike

• An eighth-grader found a T-rex tooth while on a hike in Boulder County, Colorado, KCNC reported.
• Jonathan Charpentier gave the tooth to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
• In January, a four-year-old girl discovered a 220 million-year-old dinosaur footprint.

A Colorado eighth-grader found a Tyrannosaurus rex tooth while on a hike in Boulder County, KCNC reported.

"I never expected anything like that," Jonathan Charpentier told the outlet. "It was shiny, and it caught my eye, so I picked it up, but I had no clue that it would be a dinosaur tooth. When I got home and washed it off, then I knew it was not a rock, but something else."

Charpentier said he didn't think what he found would be that interesting at first but decided to send an email to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and see what they had to say about it.

He wound up giving his find to the museum, which verified that it belonged to a T-rex, a species that inhabited the area more than 60 million years ago.

Dinosaur curator Joe Sertich told the outlet that the state is "prime" T-rex territory and the discovery is likely to prompt new research in the area.

"So we're going to go back out to this area, maybe with Jonathan, and we're going to collect more bones and hopefully there's more of a T-Rex out there waiting for us to dig it up," Sertich said.

Charpentier is not the only kid to make a dinosaur discovery of late: In January, a four-year-old girl discovered a 220 million-year-old perfectly preserved dinosaur footprint while walking along a beach in South Wales.