I actually had a super similar concept for a game! The idea was that you'd have your own museum acting as a hub, and from there you’d go out on missions to do the excavations yourself. It was basically a mix of A Game About Digging A Hole where you manually hunt for fossils, combined with a PowerWash Simulator vibe where you have to carefully clean them up afterwards.
Your game comes incredibly close to that vision, and honestly, I think it's just so cool that someone else had a similar idea and actually turned it into such an awesome game. The art style in particular is super charming and endearing.
As a quick side note: I’m an indie dev/game designer/producer hybrid myself, based in Germany. If you ever plan on localizing the game, feel free to send me your string tables (or localization spreadsheet). I’d be more than happy to do the German translation for free! A natural, native-level translation is just a thousand times better than AI, and I'd love to help out simply because I love the indie dev scene and absolutely adore your concept.
Keep up the great work, wishing you all the best with the project!
P.S. Wishlisted <3