OSLO (Reuters) - Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl plans to study a giant pyramid-shaped structure in Sicily which he says could be thousands of years old and built for sun worship.

"This is an incredibly exciting structure,'' Heyerdahl, 85, was quoted Tuesday as telling the daily Aftenposten.

"After studying pyramids in the Middle East, Mexico, Peru and most recently at Guimar on Tenerife (in Spain's Canary Islands), I saw immediately that this was something special,'' he said.

Some Italian archaeologists have argued that the pyramid, near the town of Pietraperzia in the center of the island off the southern tip of Italy, is no more than a giant pile of stones cleared from fields by farmers to help grow crops.

Heyerdahl has offered to fund a study of the 40 feet tall and 100 feet long terrace-like construction, partly overgrown by grass and trees in the middle of a field.

In the early 1990s, Heyerdahl made discoveries Tucume in Peru showing that the Indians had large reed ocean boats, revealing a possibility of contact between America and other continents long before the Vikings or Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean.

He won world fame in 1947 by sailing his Kon Tiki balsa-wood raft from South America to Polynesia in a 101-day trip in support of his theory the Polynesians came from South America.