In the Kimberley region of Western Australia, archaeologists have uncovered a buried hatchet that's making quite the dent in the world of anthropology. 

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According to a press release from the University of Sydney, the axe fragment dates back more than 45,000 years to the Stone Age. The fragment discovered is barely the size of a thumbnail, but the researchers argue it's certainly a big deal. 

The archaeologists note in their study, which was published in the journal Australian Archaeology, that the ground-edge axe must have been created around the same time humans first arrived on the continent, answering the persistent question in archaeology of when exactly axes were first invented.

"Polished stone axes were crucial tools in hunter-gatherer societies and were once the defining characteristic of the Neolithic phase of human life. But when were axes invented? This question has been pursued for decades, since archaeologists discovered that in Australia axes were older than in many other places. Now we have a discovery that appears to answer the question," Peter Hiscock, a professor at the University of Sydney and the study's lead author, said in a statement. 

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"Since there are no known axes in Southeast Asia during the Ice Age, this discovery shows us that when humans arrived in Australia they began to experiment with new technologies, inventing ways to exploit the resources they encountered in the new Australian landscape," Hiscock said.

The hatchet fragment outdates other ancient axes from around the world by tens of thousands of years.

"Nowhere else in the world do you get axes at this date. In Japan such axes appear about 35,000 years ago. But in most countries in the world they arrive with agriculture after 10,000 years ago," Sue O’Connor, the lead archaeologist of the first excavation that unearthed the axe fragment and other artifacts at Carpenter's Gap in the 1990s. Carpenter's Gap is a rock shelter known to be one of the first areas occupied by modern humans in Australia. 

So the research suggests axes were first developed about 50,000 years ago as humans in Australia honed not just basalt rock, but in turn, their skills in hunting. 

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