Using the Zombie spell on a fossil

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Frigid, goddess of seriousness and prudish behavior? :)

Trololo, her brother the god of finding things even funnier when someone else is visibly irritated by them.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Real fossils are incredibly fragile, but who wouldn't blow loads of magic just to wallop someone while yelling, "You need to check yourself before you T wreck yourself!" or "I bet you're dino-SORE now!"

I bet YOU feel boned!

I'll come down on you like a skele-TON of bricks!

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

No Harry. Not in this universe. Your zombies work differently.

But ridding Sue into battle is so much fun!

But yes it comes down what the underling Thaumatology of the system. But I'm sure there is so ways of animating the skeleton called the end result, and Undead, Golem or what not 8)

[GodBeastX]

I would allow it, because it's a dead thing and it's magic. And if they only have a head, Skull Spirit that T-rex skull!

[dripton]

As a kid, I went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in DC a lot, and I assumed that those big complete dinosaur skeletons were all fossil.

As an adult, I went to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, which had little pictures next to the dinosaur skeletons showing how much of each was actual fossil versus how much was sculpture. And it was pretty disappointing how few were anywhere near complete. (A couple of the "fossils" were actually 0% fossil.)

What I'm saying is that if someone tries this on the "dinosaur skeleton" in the museum, the GM has other options between "it works, you have an animated T-Rex skeleton" and "it doesn't work." Choose your target carefully!

[Flyndaran]

The famous, albeit hominid not dinosaur, Lucy was a miracle find because it was 40% complete.

[Anthony]

Broadly speaking, at the TLs where you're likely to run into reasonably reconstructed dinosaur skeletons, the weapons to blow said skeleton to bits are also widely available, so it's probably not much of a balance problem to allow animating them (at, of course, the increased cost for their SM).

[Flyndaran]

I'm not so sure about that. At its heart, it's all just bone taxidermy.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

The famous, albeit hominid not dinosaur, Lucy was a miracle find because it was 40% complete.

Sue is the largest, most extensive and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimen ever found at over 90% recovered by bulk

[Flyndaran]

And that's why they named it. Because it's a unique find of insane importance for the species. A quick search says that only around 50 individuals have been found, and, of course, most are not remotely as complete as Sue.
Imagine if you randomly grabbed 50 humans and tried to reconstruct everything about us from those small piles of remains.