Prehistoric Farm DNA Restoration: Turn a Completed Fossil Set Into an Egg

DNA restoration is the step in Prehistoric Farm that turns a finished fossil collection into a dinosaur egg. You complete one species' fossil set at the dig sites, carry it to Dr. Ivy at the DNA Lab on the home island, and use her "Trade fossils for an egg" prompt. The egg is created on the spot and starts incubating on a visible countdown — the trade itself is the decisive action, not an automatic payout for filling the set.

What you need before restoration

Two things gate the conversion:

1. A complete fossil set of a single species. Fossils come from dig sites: grab your shovel, hold it down on a dig site, and let go when the meter is in the green for a better find. Digs can also return no fossil at all, so filling a set takes retries. The game tracks each species' set separately with visible counts — one recorded session shows a Cambrian set going from "three out of six" to "we need two more for DNA" until the tracker finally reads "Ready to extract DNA." Don't travel until you see that flag. (The Cambrian set shown had six fossils; the same session's Tectalic set also had to be completed species by species, but set sizes for other species aren't confirmed, so check your tracker rather than assuming a number.)
2. The set must be brought to Dr. Ivy's DNA Lab on the home island. The official How To Play puts it plainly: "Collect a full set of fossils and bring them to Dr. Ivy to grow an egg." The "Ready to extract DNA" flag is resolved by visiting the lab — you can't convert at the dig site.

Getting to a complete set has its own context. Shovel tier limits where you can dig: the bronze shovel costs 2,500 Coins, and until you have it only the Cambrian area is diggable — some digs on other islands are explicitly undiggable without a better shovel. New fossil islands are reached by buying bigger boats. These gates affect sourcing sets from later periods, not the lab trade itself. For a full breakdown of the fossils and sets themselves, see the fossils and fossil sets guides.

Where the conversion happens

The trade takes place at Dr. Ivy's DNA Lab on the home island — official game copy names it directly: "unearth ancient fossils, and turn them into eggs at Dr. Ivy's DNA Lab." Each location has a distinct role in the loop: dig sites supply fossils, the lab converts a finished set into an egg, and the incubator and hatchery handle the egg afterward. Dr. Ivy is the only NPC shown performing the conversion; more on the lab itself is on the DNA Lab page and the Dr. Ivy page.

How to trade a fossil set for an egg

The full conversion, as performed twice in a recorded session:

1. Finish a set until the tracker reads "Ready to extract DNA."
2. Sail back to the home island and enter the DNA Lab.
3. Interact with Dr. Ivy. She opens with: "I'm Dr. Ivy. I bring fossils back to life. Got any samples for me?" Then use the explicit "Trade fossils for an egg" prompt. A short conversion animation plays and the egg is created, named for its species — "There we go. Tectalic."
4. Confirm success by the incubation countdown. The moment the trade completes, the egg enters incubation on a visible timer. That countdown is your recognizable success state.

No fee is shown for this trade in any available source, and nothing confirms a separate extraction step before it — the prompt with Dr. Ivy is the whole transaction.

After the trade: incubation and collection

The countdown doesn't block other play — the recorded player went fishing while waiting and returned when the timer was nearly up. Observed incubation times were five minutes for the first egg and 2 minutes 30 seconds for the second in that single session, so treat those as examples rather than a fixed rule. When the countdown ends, the ready egg is announced and collected at the hatchery, and the hatched dino is placed on your ranch to begin the feeding-and-growth stage.

From here the loop continues on dedicated pages: warming and hatching is covered in the incubator and dinosaur eggs guides, and growing your hatchling is covered under dinosaur raising. If you're saving up for the bronze shovel or a bigger boat while filling sets, current codes are the quick way to top up.