Fossilized Tail
| Fossilized Tail | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Collection |
| Location | Dig Site |
| Sell Price | 100g |
The Fossilized Tail is the club-tipped end of Professor Snail's big specimen, and it is washed out of the riverbed rather than dug or caught. Panning the shimmering lights in the water at the Ginger Island Dig Site is the only way to turn one up, so this bone waits on a tool that many farmers never think to carry overseas. One tail finishes the back end of the Large Animal in the Island Field Office, and the professor pays six Golden Walnuts and a Banana Sapling once the whole frame is standing. Any extras grind down into fertiliser at a Bone Mill or sew into a Skeleton Shirt. Offered as a present, it goes down badly with every single villager.
The in-game description reads: This tail has a club-like feature at the tip.
Overview
The pan has to be earned back in the valley before the island trip is any use. Completing the Fish Tank bundles in the Community Center clears the glittering boulder that blocks the mountain stream, and Willy turns up the next morning with a Copper Pan as a thank you. From then on, patches of shimmering light appear at the edges of water on every map, the island included, and striking one with the pan brings up whatever that spot was hiding.
At the Dig Site those lights sit along the river that cuts through the excavation. Panning them gives the usual mix of ores and minerals, and the tail is on the same table. The lights move about from day to day, so the routine is simple: cross the rebuilt bridge, walk the bank, and pan anything that glitters before swinging a pickaxe at the bone nodes nearby.
Professor Snail only takes donations once he is out of his cave, which means blowing the boulder off the entrance above the dig. His Field Office then collects four skeletons, and the biggest wants this tail alongside a pair of legs, the ribcage, the skull and the spine. Nothing is paid out until that last piece is in place, and the hint button on the donation screen will point at the river for anyone stuck on the tail.
A spare tail has a few uses. The Bone Mill takes one and returns fertiliser, either Quality Fertilizer, plain or Deluxe Speed-Gro, or Tree Fertilizer, and the machine sometimes doubles the output for the same bone. A Sewing Machine spool turns the tail into the Skeleton Shirt. The dye pots at 2 Willow Lane, in the house Emily and Haley share, take it as a yellow dye. Gunther's Fragments Of The Past order on the Special Orders board counts it as one of the hundred bone items it asks for, and that order ends with the Bone Mill recipe in the post.
Notes
Panning rewards patience more than skill. The lights respawn, so a farmer who crosses the dig every island day will find the tail without ever going out of their way for it.
Golden Walnuts from the finished skeleton go straight back into island access. The parrots take them for bridges, the resort and the farmhouse, and a hundred of them open Qi's Walnut Room, so the professor's bone hunt is one of the steadier ways to fund the rest of Ginger Island.
All Collections
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
