Prehistoric Farm Exploration: Choose Your Next Island or Sea Activity

Prehistoric Farm exploration is everything past your ranch fence, and nearly all of it starts at the same dock. The game's own [Explore] menu splits it into four branches: buy bigger boats and sail to new fossil islands, fish the open sea and dive for rare catches, sneak into the Sunken Grotto to steal sea reptile eggs, and team up with other players to take down the giant Mosasaurus with spears.

Each branch opens up at a different point, and the ones you can act on today are gated by just two things: the shovel you carry and the boat you sail. Here's the map, with the confirmed gates, so you can pick a destination and know exactly what to save toward.

The branches at a glance

How exploration opens up

Your home island is the hub every trip starts and ends at. The boat dock sits alongside Dr. Ivy's DNA Lab ("I bring fossils back to life"), the shovel shop, the hatchery, your ranch and the food shop — so the natural loop is sail out, dig, sail home, and trade a full fossil set to Dr. Ivy for an egg. The game's How To Play gives the core dig action: hold down on a dig site and let go when the meter is in the green for a better find. Digs don't always pay — "no fossil" results are common — which is why coins trickle in slowly enough that gates like the 2,500-coin bronze shovel feel like real milestones.

Sailing itself is quick early on: the first recorded trip from spawn to a dig island took less than a minute. Night adds one variation — glowing dig sites appear after dark, and one player was prompted to "find a glowing dig site" — though what they hold beyond the usual fossils isn't spelled out. Timing your digs around day and night matters enough that it has its own digging timing page.

Exploration isn't strictly a boat affair, either: once a dinosaur is grown, the How To Play invites you to hop on and ride your partner dino around the islands.

Fossil islands: the dig branch

Dig islands are themed by prehistoric period, and two gate systems decide where you can actually work.

Shovel tier gates dig areas. With the shovel you start with, Cambrian is the only area you can dig. The bronze shovel — 2,500 coins, bought at the home-island shop — opens Devonian digging, and this gate has been walked end to end in play: one player found fossils on a farther island he couldn't touch ("I can't dig up any of this"), sailed home, saved up 2,500 coins from digging and fishing, bought the bronze shovel, and dug on the Devonian Island without trouble. The shovel after bronze is priced at 12,000 coins, but what it unlocks isn't shown yet.

Boat tier gates islands. The game's description and the independent summaries agree on the rule: bigger boats open new fossil islands. Boats cost coins — the next boat after your starter is 4,000, and one player docked with 3,600 and came up short. No source ties a specific boat to a specific island, so treat each purchase as progress toward "somewhere new" rather than a known unlock. Speed is part of the deal too: the starter boat is, in that player's words, "extremely slow".

There's one workaround while you save. A grown aquatic dinosaur can stand in for a small boat — as GameRant's guide puts it, "a sea dino that replaces it puts you on the water without the usual wait."

A note before you start counting islands: the fossil menu lists Cambrian, Devonian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous and "Cretaceous seas" as periods, but only Cambrian and Devonian digging are demonstrated, and whether the Cretaceous entries are separate islands hasn't been confirmed. Triassic and Jurassic Islands do exist as named sail destinations — one player steered toward both — but what gates digging there isn't shown. The fossil islands page keeps track of what's known about each.

The open sea: fishing and diving

Fishing is the most accessible branch, and its only confirmed requirement is bait, bought in-game before you can cast. Catches shown in play include mackerel, puffer fish, sardine and swordfish — two swordfish landed in a single lucky stretch. As income it's modest: small catches sold for 5 and 10 coins apiece in that session. Where fishing shines is as a fill-in activity — the same player fished straight through an incubation timer instead of standing around. The fishing page covers the cast-by-cast details.

Diving shares its description line with fishing — "fish the open sea and dive for rare catches" — and that's about all that's locked down. No gear, locations or requirements for a dive are stated, so treat it as a source of rare catches rather than a grind you can plan around yet. The open sea page follows both water activities as they get documented.

The Sunken Grotto and the Mosasaurus

Two encounters sit at the far end of the map. The Sunken Grotto is the stealth play: sneak in and steal sea reptile eggs. The Mosasaurus fight is the multiplayer spectacle: team up with other players and take the giant down with spears.

What the game's description doesn't give is an entry ticket. Its only stated conditions are to sneak in and to team up with spears — nothing is said about levels, purchases, gear or party size. Undocumented isn't the same as free entry, so treat both as goals to keep an eye on rather than trips you're sure you already qualify for.

Picking your next trip

• Still on the starter shovel: dig Cambrian until the bronze shovel's 2,500 coins are yours — it's the first confirmed expansion of where you can dig.
• Bronze in hand: point your savings at the 4,000-coin boat, or grow an aquatic dino to act as your ferry, and new fossil islands come next.
• Rather not dig: buy bait and cast a line — fishing asks for nothing but bait and patience.

If those coin targets look steep, the current codes can take the edge off the grind. And since destination access and activity availability can shift as the game adds content, it's worth rechecking what your shovel and boat can actually reach after a major update.