Im aware of some other threads have covered the concept and notion of digging up fossils but I think i have a concept that would fit in very nicely with DF without being overly complex or contemporary to our own world's reasonable success collecting and interpreting fossils.
Fossils are bones of creatures that have been long dead which we'll be referring to as 'Petrified Bones' since akin to petrified wood a lot of time has passed by and fossils in itself is actually a broad term to a spectrum of objects, ranging from sea creatures, plants, but relevant to ourselves are bones, and ammonites/shelled creatures and ivory from ancient elephants.
How fossils generateTo establish a set of bones to be found in a stone or dirt layer, it needs to accord to when the creature's entire species went extinct, in the present era or in times past, this would be handled by a new tag to denote that a creature in the RAWS is already deceased, but existed at one time. [EXTINCT://years since//]
Any period of time set before the current state of world generation is referred to as "a time before time" but geology practices know slightly better. If a creature dies in the process of world generation and the game progresses for 50 to a 100 or more years, their bodies will be committed to usually the first layer of stone in the quantity of frequency of when they were alive and roughly where they lived etc.
Fossils of creatures that pre-date world generation would be sourced from a fossil.raw with a array of creatures with the tag [EXTINCT:100,000] or long varying dates with the tag denoting the actual length in years relevant to how deep in the geological layers they are found.
Examples of fossil source creatures[CREATURE:MAMMOTH]
> Has Ivory, so distributed mammoth remains would grant extremely valuable 'petrified ivory'
> Large body mass, so a lot of bones per-frequency would be distributed across layers
> Lives in cold climates hence where the bones would be found
> Glaciers preserve things perfectly, so it might be possible to find some other abstract body objects from the creature raw, like meat or if very lucky, a entire petrified corpse. do not let a necromancer re-animate it; it'll start the countdown to rotting when revealed so the heavy beast needs to be processed fast.
[CREATURE:AMMONITE]
> A exception to the rule, this creature overrides with [LIVING_FOSSIL://date//] which grants it both the status of being found in fossil layers (according to input), while still being alive in the present time, Coelacanth's are similar, as are sharks having lived in the seas for millenia, but having cartiligenous bones might yield junk.
> A verminous creature, their remains would be littered in and around oceans, petrified ammonite shells are worth significantly more than recently harvested ones.
> Ammonite shells were a common collectors item of interest in the past, even whilst the creatures were misunderstood or misinterpreted like other creatures.
[CREATURE:LIZARD_TYRANT/DINOSAUR]
> Generic enormous stomping dinosaur, it being on a raw being open ended to interpretation without getting into the specifics, whether it is a carnivore theropod or herbivore like the respective anklysaurid & sauropod hardcoded bodytypes, these exist in the rock deep underground seperated by a large gap in time.
> Giant petrified theropod teeth may be valuable, as are any horns and claws that they have besides their impressive skulls and robust bones.
[CREATURE:PRECURSOR_RACE]
> Sentient remains are not discounted from the list of potential creatures being extinct, for the purpose of 'lore' in a modified game you might want to create a race that lived many aeons previously, this can tie into mythology where relevant, prototypes of the gods before settling upon what they have at present. Perhaps metal constructs like golems lying dormant within the earth waiting for new masters upon unearthing and awakening with a interaction?
Use In the FortressAs i've been mentioning, there's a lot of petrified resources sourced from the body of the creatures it comes from, each petrified resource is worth double or triple initially of their original material, with the creature's own material modifiers accounted for making excavation of these limited supplies lucrative. Petrified materials themselves are subclasses of the refuse materials and hence would be workable by all the jobs, if you wanted to inscribe mammoth ivory into bed for a special occasion for instance via a craftshop.
- To reveal fossils, all that is required is to dig stone, the fossil will pop out where present, and the stone itself will have a text notice about the fossil contained within prior to digging (announcements optional i guess) governed by the rng that already determines where ores and common stones will drop from regular walls or if you will destroy the fossil with it.
Researchers additionally would use viewing a fossil within the natural sciences field as a source of inspiration, rather than the typical thoughts regarding prayers, nightmare premonitions and sudden brainwaves. It wouldn't contribute anything important but may form the basis of a observation on how a particular group of animals lived or what they looked like. Later developments with scholars might open the pathway to build a impressive (and no doubt wildly valuable) multi petrified bone piece complete skeleton as a form of statue.
Graveyards and buried bones
In civilized settlements, graveyard arrangements will commit the dead to these public areas where large densities of bones could be found if you dug into them, slowly as time goes by drifting down the geological layers depending on how much use they are recieving for a few world tiles around the settlement too.
Digging into bones of citizens may be disrespectful to civs, and disturbing ancient resting places can invoke a influx of ghosts unless they are re-interred. A fine line that these bones typically wouldn't be petrified like the rest, hence very little benefit to collecting them.
- Bones that are excavated of sentients, perhaps looking perpectively to a long extinct dwarven race with some modding work whilst playing as another species adhere to the usual trophy ethic rules, hence make better display items as they are rather than be converted into high value totems.
//Reading list// - will write in later.
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Topic: Unearthable Fossilized, buried and petrified remains (Read 3094 times)