Australian researchers on Thursday said they discovered that prehistoric animals had excellent sight.

Scientists from the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide examined a 515 million-year-old fossilized eyes found on Kangaroo Island of South Australia, and found that the prehistoric animals had "compound eyes" with more than 3,000 lenses each.

This means that some of the earliest animals had very powerful eyesight with similar vision to living creatures today.

The team concluded that sharp vision must have evolved very rapidly soon after the first predators appeared 540 million years ago.

According to University of South Australia paleontologist Dr. Jim Jago, he was surprised to find complex eyes, like those of living insects, in such primitive animals.

"It was a fluke, to be honest," he said in a statement released on Thursday.

"I was cataloging another fossil and just happened to notice this blob. It looked like an eye ... but looked a bit complex for an eye of that age."

It is not clear exactly from what creature the fossils from Kangaroo Island came from, but the researchers said the animal is thought to have been about the size of a prawn or crab. Its eyes measured 1 cm, which meant it was likely to have been large for the period in which it lived.

Paleontologist Dr. Jim Gehling from the South Australian Museum said the discovery provides valuable information on early marine creatures.

"We now have six really good specimens and lots of fragmentary specimens and there is probably a lot more to come," he said.

"This is one of the greatest places in the world to actually study the earliest marine animals."

"We found what I suppose you'd call the disembodied eyes of a creature that was able to see with remarkable vision compared with what we would have expected for that time, around about 515 million years ago."

Details of the research are published in Thursday's edition of the science journal, Nature.