Speculation of the mammoth skeleton

Here we see an icy biome, it's very beautiful and appealing to look at. To the right, you can see the image of what seems to be a woolly mammoth encased in an icecap. I've been wondering what this skeleton could possibly do for the game, it must have some kind of feature. I mean how would you place it or mine it?

Speculation 1-
Stickers; Quite possibly, they could have implemented some sort of sticker feature. Stickers would be images that can be placed on a group of blocks as long as the sticker is small enough to fit. This Wooly Mammoth corpse may be a type of sticker. To back up this theory, they've already released the information that you can place decals on spaceships. I wouldn't be surprised if you could place decals/stickers on regular blocks.

Speculation 2-
Fossils; Maybe there's a fossil system? A bunch of different skeleton figures could be lodged in the ground or icecaps. If you mine the full image out, then you could gain the fossil itself. If this were to be possible, it would be neat if we could revive or clone the fossilized animal back into existance. By doing this, you may own it as a pet or even start your own colony of them in the wilderness.
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What are your guesses to what this may be? Maybe it's just eye candy, who knows.

 

Or maybe they have randomly generated things in blocks to make the game look more appealing.

 

Spec 2 would provide additional gameplay elements, not to mention some deeper lore/ pre history of your arrival to the planet.

 

IMO, it's just an eye candy.

 

If it's just eye candy, and party of those ice blocks, what happens when you break apart all the ice into ice cubes? Are you left with a mammoth skull, a bunch of ice cubes and bone chips, or....?

 

Bone would be an interesting building material, or would it just be for decor?

 

Hmm, now that you mention it...it does seem like the girl with the penguin is situated in a way where she could have been mining the skull out of the ice...

Speculations, at this point for sure, but I do like the opportunities it may open up [| _ |]

 

I'm guessing breaking the entire ice floe would break in half with enough hits from a mining tool.. Like, rather than mining it one by one, think of it as having its own 'hit points', like Terraria's trees.

I don't know, though. It also looks like a sticker to me; only, a naturally-generated one.

 

I would love an archaeology system! I'm all for that.

 

Maybe you would just transport it to the space station and have some creepy taxidermy room.

 

I like Spec 2, now I can have "Jurassic Park" haha.

 

The good old fashion Jurassic Park style cloning system?

 

Possibly, it would be pretty sweet

 

When I clicked on this thread I started at the bottom so I had to scroll up to the top, and I saw this say "mining the skull out of the ice..." and I thought you were just trying to add emphasis to mining ice, and I thought "Wow, haven't heard that one before..." I eventually discovered what you mean, and as for my opinion of the skull: Cool, but probably not in-game.

 

Hopefully the devs are watching this thread and are making note of such an awesome idea!

 

My thoughts exactly!

 

Lets send them the link in a bottle.

 

Can't we just send a zerg swarm with the message?
a bottle seems a little subtle with all the explosions and alien invasions to come

 

I will harvest the mammoth DNA and create a herd of mammoth mounts.

I WILL rule the universe.

 

Spec 2 sounds really, really cool.