RDR2 dinosaur bones: where to find all 30 and what Deborah MacGuiness gives you

The game’s other collections are on the RDR2 collectibles page.

The line opens in Chapter 2. Deborah MacGuiness is digging up a bone in The Heartlands (New Hanover), southeast of the Horseshoe Overlook camp, not far from Flatneck Station.

There is no letter to kick it off: the quest starts when you talk to her. After the cutscene, Deborah asks you to look for other bones around the world and send her the coordinates. The game does not mark the bones on the map, so you will have to search by the landmarks in the table below.

Inspect each bone you find with the interact button and your character will log it in the journal. Then at any Post Office choose to send mail and mark the locations you have found.

According to the wiki, if you collect bones before meeting Deborah, the last one, the thirtieth, will not highlight or register until the quest has started. So it is easier to talk to her first.

The numbers on the map match the table below (Red Dead Wiki numbering). The dots are placed by in-game coordinates, so the distances between them are true to the game.

The table is grouped by state. Numbering and distribution follow the Red Dead Wiki: Ambarino — 5, Lemoyne — 2, New Hanover — 12, West Elizabeth — 3, New Austin — 8. There are no bones in the Great Plains and Tall Trees regions.

Landmarks follow the Red Dead Wiki and GTABase; PowerPyx and GamesRadar confirm the same spots. Some bones by the Dakota River, which runs along the border of Ambarino and New Hanover, are assigned to different states in different guides, so search by the landmark rather than the state name. The bones near Dewberry Creek are listed under the Heartlands in some lists and under Lemoyne in others. The full regional map is on the RDR2 map page.

Where the claw for the talisman comes from is covered on the RDR2 legendary animals page.

Once you send all 30, the reply does not arrive right away. Wait 1–2 in-game days (you can sleep at camp) and pick up your mail. The letter is an invitation to the Firwood Rise farm in Cumberland Forest, northeast of Valentine. There Deborah shows you the assembled skeleton and gives you the knife. According to her, it is made from a stegosaurus bone.

Guides spell the knife’s name differently: the wiki and GTABase call it the Jawbone Knife, GamesRadar the Bone Knife. According to the wiki, its stats are the same as regular knives; the only difference is the look. None of the sources we checked mention a cash reward for the bones — unlike the rock carvings, which Francis Sinclair pays for.

• Use Eagle Eye. Eagle Eye (both sticks, L3+R3) highlights a nearby bone. It is a lifesaver where a bone lies in the bushes or blends into the rock.
• Get off your horse. Some bones sit on ledges and cliffs a horse cannot reach: above the Kamassa River and on mountain ledges. Leave the horse below and climb down on foot.
• Hardest to spot. According to PowerPyx, the toughest is the bone by the stone spire southwest of Bacchus Station (#12 in the table). Nos. 4, 10, 19 and 26 lie in grass and bushes, and they are also easy to miss without Eagle Eye.
• Combine routes. The bones near Elysian Pool and Annesburg are close to dreamcatchers and rock carvings, so these collections are easy to do in a single trip.

For 100% you need to finish the "A Test of Faith" line in full: send all 30 bones and visit Deborah at Firwood Rise. Individual finds without the final visit do not count. The wiki page about the bones has a line saying finding at least one is enough, but that contradicts the same wiki’s 100% page and the PowerPyx guide. According to PowerPyx, no bone can be missed permanently.

Since 8 bones are in New Austin, where Arthur cannot properly go until the end of the story, you can only finish the line in the epilogue, playing as John Marston. The full list of requirements is on the how to get 100% in RDR2 page, and the epilogue story missions are in the RDR2 missions section.