Your model of the fossil. Drag inside it to move it, drag at its edge to pull or push the outline. Air scribes and the abrader won't cut inside it; the chisel will.
Fossil Hunter prep lab · beta
A fossil preparation bench
Free what the rock has kept for 450 million years.
Split the shale along its bedding. Read the grain in raking light. Chip, spray and stop exactly at the shell, then find out what you've uncovered. Every animal is generated: no one has seen yours before.
Real techniques · invented trilobites · works on iPad, PC and Quest
Your museum
The storeroom
Blocks waiting on the shelf, and work in progress. Pack up any time: the block goes back on the shelf exactly as you left it.
The collection
Eight drawers, each harder to read
The first block is soft shale around a hard golden shell: almost anything works. By the last, rock and shell are the same mineral, the same colour, welded together, and only a change in lustre tells you where to stop.
How to hold the tools
iPad: left thumb on the big circle sets air pressure (→) and abrasive flow / stroke rate (↑); the small circle sets the tool's angle. Both stay where you let go. One finger on the rock uses the tool. Two fingers turn, pinch to zoom, twist to roll. An Apple Pencil's tilt is the tool's angle, and its pressure throttles the air.
PC: left mouse uses the tool, right-drag turns, wheel zooms. Keys 1–4 pick tools, Q/W/E abrasives (or chisel heads), arrows move the pressure pad, [ ] tilt the tool, , . swing it round.
Quest: left grip holds and turns the block, left stick magnifies and swings the lamp, left trigger wets it. The right controller is the tool: trigger is air or hammer force, grip is flow or stroke rate. A changes tool, B abrasive or chisel head. Left X opens the wrist menu (point at a button and pull the trigger): wet, leftovers, sweep, recentre, pack up, finish. Left Y shows or hides the status panel.
Lamp: drag the sun to move it. Low light rakes across relief and shows lustre. Wet surface darkens the rock and glosses it for a while, as preparators do. Where shell lies just under thin rock, it shows through as a dark shadow.
How rock and shell behave
Hammer and chisel break rock the way rock breaks. Press to place the chisel, drag to lean it, hold to wind up, release to strike. Near an edge a flake comes off; straight down into the middle of a face it only crushes. The wedge held flat on a bedding line, struck from the side, can lift a whole layer off. Faint dark lines are joints: cracks like to follow them. Where the crack meets the fossil it runs over the shell if the matrix parts cleanly, and through it where it's welded.
Abrader cuts only what is softer than its powder. Bicarbonate is softer than calcite and pyrite; dolomite cuts limestone but frosts calcite; aluminium oxide cuts almost everything.
Air scribes chip matrix along their line. A low, lifting angle pops thin matrix off the shell; straight down into the shell marks it. Spines snap once the rock holding them is gone.
Read the line. The gold reticle is where the tool acts. The faint dotted line shows what lies beyond it inside the rock (amber where it would pass through shell).
Integrity is how intact the fossil is, and it multiplies the specimen's value. Exposed is how much of its upper surface is free.
Stay in the loop
The museum is coming
Next up: the full game in VR on Meta Quest, your own museum to build, contracts, dig sites, amber and gems. Leave your email and you'll hear when there's something new to play. Only updates, never shared, and one reply gets you off the list.
On the bench today
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Unpacking the block
Your museum
Drag to look round · click a case to walk up to it · click the floor to walk there