Suggestions for an approach to this modeling question

I’m am currently stumped on a method to achieve a particular shot I’m working on and cannot find any relevant tutorials out there.  I want to have a fresh turned grave for a Halloween video and have a skeleton come up out of the dirt.  I found the tutorial Grant did for CGCookie on Particulate Dirt but, dense me, I cannot seem to figure out what I need to do to animate the skeleton interacting with the “dirt.”   Any suggestions are most welcome. And if this is not the place to post this kind of questions my most sincerest apologies.