Paleontologist Actions

Bone Wars paleontologist actions: publish papers, debunk papers, claim an award and make a minor find.

Moving your paleontologist

Play a paleontologist card or a species card for one paleontologist action. Move your paleontologist to one of the four action spaces at the top of the board — it must be a different space from the one it stands on. A paleontologist card also gives its bonus when you perform its matching action (the cards).

Action	How often in one action
Publish Papers	As many papers as you can pay for
Debunk Papers	As many papers as you can pay for
Claim an Award	Once
Make a Minor Find	Once

Publish Papers

Play one or more species cards from your hand — all of them, with their bones, before any bonus — then for each paper:

A. Discard bone tokens

Discard 2, 3 or 4 bone tokens of different parts to the bag to assemble that species’ skeleton. The printed skull and limb are optional, and debunking instead requires identical tokens (FAQ, FAQ). A skeleton has four parts:

Part	Which tokens fit
Torso	Any torso — fits every species
Tail	Any tail — fits every species
Skull	The kind the card shows: carnivore, herbivore, or either
Limb	The kind the card shows: paw, flipper, claw, wing, or any

Bones	You get
2	1 loyalty
3	1 loyalty + the card’s prize bonus
4	2 loyalty + the prize bonus + the current round bonus

B. Archive the species card

Slide the card into the archive envelope with the same minor find icon (FAQ). Gain the envelope’s bonus once for every card now in it (the second card pays twice). Each envelope holds 1 card at first, 2 or 3 once your base camps unlock it.

C. Add a paper to the bookshelf

Add a paper tile worth the number of bones you discarded (2, 3 or 4) to the lowest free space of your current patron’s half of the bookshelf, his colour up. Fill a shelf before the one above it; within a shelf, any order. If his half is full, put extra papers on the small shelf under his portrait. The printed paper on the bottom shelf counts as a paper — don’t cover it. Values 2–4 set the debunk cost, not scoring; the small overflow shelf is not a scoring shelf, and a higher paper may slide down to fill a gap (FAQ, FAQ, FAQ, FAQ).

Debunk Papers

For each paper you want to debunk:

1. Discard 2, 3 or 4 identical bone tokens to the bag. “Identical” means the same token — 4 wings, not 4 different limbs.
2. Take a paper of exactly that value from the other patron’s half of the bookshelf, flip it and put it on your current patron’s half.
3. Slide papers from higher shelves down to fill the gap.

Identical bones	You get
2	1 loyalty
3	2 loyalty
4	4 loyalty

Claim an Award

Put one of your award markers on a free space of an award tile whose condition you meet or beat. You may have only one marker on each of the 3 award tiles, and a marker never moves again. Gain the loyalty printed on the space and the current round bonus.

Type	You need, in your archive
A	A number of species discovered by Marsh, Cope or Leidy
B	A number of reptiles, mammals or birds — each amphibian counts as any of them
C	A number of cards in one archive envelope (A to E)

Make a Minor Find

1. Archive a species card from your hand in its matching envelope (respecting the limit) and gain the envelope bonus once per card there.
2. Remove a minor find tile with the same icon from the minor finds area. None left of that kind? You cannot take this action.
3. Gain the bonus on the tile under that tile’s column.