How about borrowing the "lesser" and "enhanced" racial techs from Dark Nova? E.g. you find some ruin with Symbiotic Armor (a less powerful, more expensive Organic Armor) on it, and you can research that, and if you happen to have the Organic Manipulation racial trait then you can also get Living Armor (a more powerful Organic Armor)?
edit: but the ruin idea you proposed sounds rather GalCiv-ish to me, and I never liked hunting spatial anomalies just for another +2 to weapons damage
