Episode 254 - Abelisaurs

David Moscato (0:00)

You're listening to The Common Descent Podcast.

Hello, Will. Hello, David. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to Common Descent, a podcast about paleontology, evolution, the history of life on earth, and occasionally dinosaurs. This is episode 254 We're back with dinosaurs, this time for the topic of Abelisaurs, which is a famous but not that famous group of large carnivorous dinosaurs. This will be a fun one to sort of dive into. This is a group that if you're familiar with dinosaurs, you're familiar with some of the members of this group.

Will Harris (0:55)

Yes.

David Moscato (0:55)

But you may not be familiar with the group as a whole or their history or their evolutionary trends. I certainly wasn't as familiar as I could have been. This is a very iconic, distinctive and really fascinating group of big predatory dinosaurs.

Will Harris (1:12)

Yeah, they are such an interesting mix of big deal and unknown. Like they're the most famous unknown group of dinosaurs.

David Moscato (1:22)

Yeah.

Will Harris (1:23)

And it's very fun getting to go in more depth.

David Moscato (1:26)

So we'll talk about who these dinosaurs are. We'll discuss some of their most famous members, which include at least one of the most famous predatory dinosaurs of all time.

Will Harris (1:36)

Yes.

David Moscato (1:37)

The features that make them distinctive and will dive through their evolutionary history and what sets them apart from other more famous groups of large predatory dinosaurs. This episode topic was also requested because some of you out there are familiar with Abelisaurs and want to hear more about them.

And by some, I mean a bunch. This topic was requested by the following listeners. Jonathan, Finn, Andrew, Carly, Sorrowfaganax, JoLynn, Varun, Samwell, Joe, Leanne, Lucas, Spencer, Richard, Simon, James, Tristan, Kai, Nina, Gastric Odin, Geronimo, Faresaw, Ava and Ski.

Will Harris (2:22)

Good request, everyone.

David Moscato (2:24)

Thank you all for submitting this request. Dear listeners, if you have a request you'd like to submit, head on over to our website in the topic request form. Before we get into some sciency stuff, some quick announcements first and foremost. As always, this podcast is supported almost entirely by our patrons over on Patreon.

Just before recording this, Will and I were reviewing our yearly finances and it really drives home for us how grateful we are to our lovely patrons for their incredibly generous support of us and our scientific, educational, sci-com, fun, goofy stuff that we create. In exchange for their support, patrons get access to all sorts of bonus stuff, bonus news, live streams, merch and things like that. And at certain levels on Patreon, you get your name shouted out here on the podcast. When you join this episode, we would like to welcome new patrons, Dee Yep and Dano Kyrus.

Will Harris (3:20)

Welcome, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

David Moscato (3:23)

Dear listener, if you have not already, please consider joining us on Patreon. We greatly appreciate your consideration. This episode comes out in October, which means it's coming out right in the middle of Spooky season. By the time this episode comes out, I believe there will be two episodes of this year's Spooky already in the can and out in the beyond the can. The can is open and the Spooky is out.

This year's theme is aliens. Each episode, each Saturday in October, Will and I are evolving alien creatures from mythology and popular fiction.

Will Harris (4:00)

It's been so much fun. So give those a listen. Check out Discord where people are discussing the things that we have created. It's been really good.

David Moscato (4:10)

Yes, also on Discord, not as of this recording, but surely eventually art.

Will Harris (4:15)

Yes.

David Moscato (4:16)

Fan art, the best part of Spooky.

Speaking of Spooky, a little teaser announcement. For those of you who are interested and excited in our speculative evolution, Jaunts, we are in the process of working with a couple of friends of ours on a Spooky inspired card game. We aren't going to announce a whole lot of details just yet. Those will be coming later. But we will announce that we are working on this with our friends, Brian and Jason from the podcast Gaming with Science, which we have guest appeared on a couple of times. You can go check them out and we can reveal that the working title and the final title for this game is Creature Feature.

Will Harris (4:59)

Yes.

David Moscato (4:59)

And it takes the speculative evolution monster theming of our Spooky Series and turns it into a fun experience for a bunch of people to play. This is a project that is in the works. We will have more news on that as things develop not too far away in the future. So stay tuned for that.