The toe of a 30-tonne dinosaur has been washed up on a beach - proving for the first time that the world's biggest land animals roamed Sussex.

Until now, the Diplodocus - one of the giant plant-eaters of the Jurassic era - was thought to have lived mainly in what is now the United States and its bones have never been found in mainland Britain.

But fossil collector Frank Hamill discovered part of a toe of one of the creatures on Bexhill seafront.

Scientists have confirmed the bone is a diplodocid metatarsal. It is considerably bigger than the part of David Beckham's foot which became a national obsession before the last World Cup.

Mr Hamill said: "I'm absolutely over the moon to have discovered this. I didn't know what it was at first. I knew it was a fossil and possibly a dinosaur but it was only when we sent it away that I realised its significance. I have been fossil-hunting for about 15 years now and this is the best find I have ever made."

Retired BT engineer Mr Hamill, who has found the remains of Iguanodons before, was looking for worms when he made his discovery, which he has donated to Bexhill Museum.

He said: "When I picked it up I thought it was a nice-looking bone. I was just going to keep it in the garage but the museum said I should send it away to be looked at."

The fossilised bones of a Diplodocus were first unearthed in 1878.

The animal this latest specimen came from would have been bigger than the Diplodocus skeleton on display at the Natural History Museum.

Bexhill Museum curator Julian Porter said: "It would have been the biggest thing ever to have walked through Bexhill.

"There have been finds of sauropods - the family the Diplodocus belongs to - in this country but they have always been on the Isle of Wight. The Weald of Sussex is very similar to the Isle of Wight and we had always assumed that Diplodocus were around what is now Bexhill.

"This is a first for Bexhill. I don't know of any other finds like this locally."

Diplodocus roamed the plains of what is now the central US until 145 million years ago, although scientists believe they may have survived in southern England until the lower Cretaceous period, 15 million years later.

It was one of the largest sauropods.

Its descendant, the Argentinosaurus, is thought to have been the heaviest land animal of all time, weighing 100 tonnes.

Diplodocus was up to 90ft long, had a long neck and a whip-like tail, and walked on four elephant-like legs.

It had nostrils on top of its skull, peg-like teeth and a brain the size of a human fist.

Mr Porter added: "You can just imagine this thing ploughing through what has become Bexhill.

"We can now prove that a whole new group of dinosaurs lived here 130 million years ago."