Two students in France found an ancient human's tooth dating back more than 500,000 years in a cave in the nation's southwest region.

According to the Associated Press, the archaeology students were helping search a cave known as Tautavel, a cave notes for its prehistoric contents. Tony Chevalier, a paleoanthropologist overseeing the discovery, called the tooth, estimated at 560,000 years old, "significant" for its implications on ancient human fossils.

"We are pretty confident that the site has a lot more to reveal," Christian Perrenoud, a geo-archaeologist from the excavation site, told The Local. "Human remains from between 500,000 and 800,000 years ago are more than scarce in Europe nowadays, and this tooth fills a bit of the gap of the incompleteness in this 300,000-year period."

The student who discovered the tooth was only identified as Camille, a 16-year-old student who was volunteering at the excavation site. She was working with another young volunteer when she found the tooth, Agence France Press reported.

"A large adult tooth - we can't say if it was from a male or female - was found during excavations of soil we know to be between 550,000 and 580,000 years old, because we used different dating methods," Amelie Viallet, a paleoanthropologist, told AFP. "This is a major discovery because we have very few human fossils from this period in Europe."