S2E01 - Holotype (Paleontology) - Gaming with Science

Episode Transcript
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Jason (00:00):
Brian, hello and

(00:06):
welcome to the Gaming withScience Podcast, where we talk
about the science behind some ofyour favorite games.

Brian (00:11):
Today, we're going to discuss Holotype by Brexwerx
Games.
Hey, this is Brian

Jason (00:21):
This is Jason,

Will (00:22):
this is Will.

David (00:23):
This is David

Brian (00:24):
Will, and David, David and will.

David (00:26):
That's us. We're new.

Brian (00:28):
Where are you guys from?

David (00:29):
We are the hosts of Common Descent, a podcast about
paleontology, Earth history,evolution. We are also fellow
Dragon Con science track folks,yeah, and we do a lot of science
communication and stuff. We areboth paleontologists.

Brian (00:44):
So I asked for the benefit of the listeners, I know
who you guys are very well,because I've been a listener of
Common Descent, not since thebeginning, but for a very long
time. Very, very excited to haveyou here. In fact, when I first
saw the game holotype that we'regoing to be talking about today,
it immediately sparked in mymind "I wonder if I can get Will
and David to come and guest onour podcast, if I get this

(01:06):
game", and it happened, and it'sawesome, the stars

Jason (01:10):
The Starshave aligned.

Will (01:11):
Yes.

David (01:12):
we actually played at the at the museum, yeah, which was,
which was very fun,

Will (01:16):
very fitting.

Brian (01:16):
No dinosaurs and gray, of course.

David (01:18):
No. Well, we have some birds. We've got about a dozen
different types of birds.

Brian (01:24):
But anyway, why don't we do our little science banter? At
first, is there some interestingbit of science to learn about,
or would like to talk about?

Will (01:31):
Absolutely, the one that's fresh on my mind, which is a
study on the specimen ofborealopelta, which is a
ridiculously well preservedankylosaur, or nothosaur,
specifically armored dinosaur.It's 3d preserved stomach
content, skin pigment, one ofthe, if not the best preserved

(01:52):
dinosaur we've ever found. Thisstudy was looking at the fact
that the keratin, the hornymaterial on the armor, is also
preserved, and we've nevergotten that before. So they were
looking at what is the actualstatus and state of this keratin
on this armored dinosaur. Theytook the measurements of like
the thickness and the coverageand how it interacts with all of

(02:16):
the armor plates. And what theywere able to do that had never
been able to be done before, isactually say, How does this
modify the defensive aspects ofthis armor? Because we knew they
had boney armor, and we knew itprobably had a keratin covering,
but now we actually have theentire armor, both parts, and so
we can actually see what forcesit can take. And I don't

(02:37):
remember the exact numbers, butthe rough equivalents that they
gave for the force that thisarmor combination should be able
to take is about that of a highspeed car crash, which is
ridiculous, and as they noted,way more than what would be
required to survive like apredator bite for that time,
even the big theropod dinosaurs.So most likely this was when

(03:01):
borealopeltas fought each otherso that they could not, they
could survive the damage thatwas being dealt by another
borealopelta.

Jason (03:09):
holy cow evolution does not make things that big just
for kicks and giggles, you don'tget things that overkill without
there being a very good reason.

Will (03:17):
Absolutely.

David (03:18):
I'll add a smaller science fact onto that, that the
bony armor that Ankyl, thatarmored dinosaurs have is bones
that grow in the skin, which arecalled osteoderms, which are
also present in a bunch of otherdinosaurs, in a bunch of modern
lizards, in alligators andcrocodiles, as well as
armadillos and ground sloths.Yeah, have osteoderms

Brian (03:40):
ground sloths?

David (03:41):
Not they, most of those could not survive a car crash.
Armadillos, very famously, donot survive car crashes. But
yeah, ground sloths, they didn'thave a full like coat of it,
like an armadillo, but they didhave like patches of osteoderms,

Will (03:54):
and they look like pebbles. They look like rocks.
It's very irregular in shape.

Jason (03:59):
Anyway, I'm glad you guys didn't steal my science fact. I
looked one up. It was this studythat came out only a week or two
ago, studying not the dinosaursthemselves, but what they ate in
Poland and so finding all thesethings. So looking at Dinosaur
poop, dinosaur vomit anddinosaur intestine contents.

Brian (04:16):
I'm sorry, what?

Will (04:17):
Yeah,

David (04:18):
it's a very cool study.

Will (04:19):
It's awesome.

Brian (04:20):
Is that a regurgite? So regurgitalites?

Jason (04:23):
I have all the words here. So dinosaur poop is
coprolite. Vomit isregurgitalites. Fossilized
contents of digestive tracts arecolalties. And together, these
are classed as bromolites. Soall these wonderful names for
basically post process dinosaurfood

Brian (04:42):
Yes, for mid process, mid process.

Jason (04:46):
But basically, there's apparently a very good climatic
record around when the dinosaurscame to power, when they really
ascended and became the dominantlike land vertebrate. They
looked at these over time, andthey were able to do a lot of
really high resolution scanningand such. And find out, here's
beetles and fish and fish scalesand all sorts of things. And
look at how dinosaur dietschanged over time as they came

(05:10):
to dominate the landscape. And Ibelieve the take home is that
dinosaurs diversified their dietand sort of spread out and just
started filling out the nichesand essentially just pushing
everything else out over time.

David (05:22):
Yeah, the one of the main takeaways from that paper was
actually that it was thiscomplex process that happened
over some 30 million years. Sothere was probably a very a big
combination of dinosaurs beingbetter adapted for certain
things, but also majorenvironmental changes that left

(05:42):
ecosystem spaces open. So it wasthis, it would have been this
combination of them outcompeting other animals and
getting lucky, yeah, and getfilling in spaces that had been
recently emptied.

Will (05:54):
And it also happened in this, like, interesting step
pattern, yes, you know, wasn't acontinuous just blob like it was
very these things, you know,these shifts happen, and then
these shifts happen, and theyslowly, much more like a
monopoly forming. Slowly theytake on different competitors.

Brian (06:16):
That's like a game of Risk, yes, putting it back in
Game form, yes. Slowly,something sort of like starts to
move out, and they're like,well, we'll just take that Yep,
we'll take that niche. Well,we'll take this other niche.
Yes,

David (06:27):
yes. Since you two were so delighted by the different
-lites that refer to variousdinosaur excrements and internal
stuff, I will add one more as abonus fun fact. there is, I
think there's at least twoexamples of this, but I think
the original one was in likeColorado, from a fossil deposit
with a lot of dinosaurfootprints on it that there were

(06:48):
these unusual traces in thesediment that research found can
be replicated by pouring liquidfrom a few feet up in the air
onto sand, and they describethem as "urolites" or dinosaur
pee traces.

Brian (07:09):
That's absolutely fantastic. Oh man.

Jason (07:14):
So segue into the game. Of all of those, we do actually
have coprolites in the game. Youcan collect dinosaur poop, not
the other ones, those, thosewill have to wait for an
expansion.

Will (07:23):
Yes, that would be, Oh man, that would be such a great
expansion, yeah,

David (07:30):
The what comes out of dinosaurs expansion? You get
eggs and you can getregurgitatlites, gastroliths,
yes, which are stomach stones,

Brian (07:39):
yeah, gastroliths are in there already. Okay, I think
this is our perfect segue intothe game. We should talk about
the game, probably, right. Okay,so let's talk about holotype.
Holotype is published byBrexwerx games and was designed
by Brett Harrison and LexTerenchin, who are the the
namesakes of Brexwerx, Brett andLex, nice, right? So they not
only created the game, but theyalso formed the company to sell

(08:02):
holotype, to produce holotype.They do have a few other games.
It's mostly expansions ofholotype. So for instance, the
game that we played is actuallyMesozoic North America. But they
also have Mesozoic Europe. Theyhave a mini expansion, which has
the pterosaurs which we played.And they have a new expansion,
which actually I figured thatWill would be excited about

(08:22):
because they added a newcreature type.

Jason (08:24):
Crurotarsi

Brian (08:25):
yes. So that is stem crocodiles and Crocodylomorphs.
Yes, yeah.

David (08:33):
Croc side of the archosaur family tree.

Will (08:36):
Sarcosuchians and stuff like that, including suchians.
Yeah, they include a bunch of,what were the big land predators
before dinosaurs stepped in inthat role. So a bunch of big,
not really very Crocky, but liketall crocs, very tall heads and
tall bodies. Yeah.

David (08:55):
Oh, that's awesome. I demand a lepidosaurs update.

Brian (09:00):
Well, the funny thing is, is that they have this expansion
to add them to North Americabecause they're already in the
Mesozoic Europe as a base partof the game. So they had to
release, oh, there's thiscreature type from North America
as well. They do have one othergame. It is called eight legged
peacocks. It is about jumpingspiders. It is a card game

(09:20):
matching their jumping spider totheir mating dance. I haven't
played it, but that's prettymuch it. That's their entire
library of games.

David (09:26):
That sounds great.

Will (09:27):
Cute! Oh, that's adorable. That's such a good name.

Brian (09:30):
Uh, Brett is the dinosaur nerd. He's been very clear about
that. In fact, we I watched aninterview that he did where he
brought on a dinosaur book, thatis, I think, he said his
grandfather gave him when he wassix from the library that was
never returned. He just kept it.

David (09:43):
They had to make and sell this game so that they could pay
for the return for

Will (09:47):
those those library fees.

Brian (09:49):
He actually is a computer scientist, but went to UC
Berkeley and took a ton ofpaleontology electives. So just
like always, was a lifelonglover of paleontology, and when
he met Lex in Arizona becausethey basically made friends
playing board games, andevidently the name holotype,
Brett said, Oh no, we're goingto make this game holotype. He

(10:09):
had the name before he had themechanics of the game cool. Both
in the interview as well as inthe Kickstarter in the
description, accuracy,scientific accuracy, was a
really important part of thisgame, but they also wanted it to
be balanced and fun to play, andthey used a really interesting
strategy to do that. In additionto human play testing, they also
used board game simulator and aPython program to play the game

(10:30):
10,000 times a minute, tobalance the game exactly how
they wanted it to be, so thatthere would always, there was
never going to be an imbalancewith certain play strategies,
which is,

Will (10:39):
that's really cool.

Jason (10:41):
I contacted Brett, and we're going to be interviewing
him for a bonus episode aboutthat play testing process and so
that so listeners that will goup as a bonus episode, hopefully
probably about two weeks afterthis episode drops.

Brian (10:53):
This was during COVID, so they were doing all this online
testing. What is the gameactually itself, right? So
there's a little bit of theinspiration and the balancing
and all that. So it is a workerplacement game. This is one of
those classic Euro style boardgames where you have meeples,
you know, little wooden figuresthat will take your places. You
place them on the board at acertain location. Place a worker
do, an action, place a worker,do an action, place a worker do

(11:15):
an action, but this game, it hasdinosaurs in it, but you're not
playing as the dinosaurs. You'reactually playing as the
paleontologists. So you actuallyhave three types of worker. You
have your paleontologist, yourgrad student and your field
researcher, or as Jason and Ilike to call them the PI, the
principal investigator, the gradstudent and the undergraduate.
Those three workers on thatacademic rank like affects their

(11:37):
abilities. So the fieldresearcher can't do everything
that the paleontologist can do,the graduate student can do
almost everything that thepaleontologist can do. The
paleontologist can stilldisplace them from a position.
This is actually a workerdisplacement game. You could
kick out somebody of a loweracademic rank than you from
wherever they happen to besitting. Yes, yeah.

Jason (11:58):
This is very different from a lot of the other ones I
have played where you haveturns, like we played cytosis,
we played wingspan, where youhave a certain number of moves
per turn, you do all your moves,and then everyone takes their
pieces back. This one, there'sno turns. You're continually
pushing and you're continuallykicking each other off of spaces
by essentially pulling rank,because the different pieces can

(12:19):
only kick off someone of thesame rank or lower. So your poor
little field assistantundergraduate can only kick off
another undergraduate. Theycan't kick off a the
paleontologist professor or agraduate student.

Brian (12:32):
Which you know, it sounds really mean, and when you
describe it, it sounds like, oh,that's, that's so that's so
mean. But actually, the gamekind of requires it to happen.
You're actually it's helpful toget booted off from where you
are, because now you get to dosomething different. So I don't
know it should feel like you'rebeing mean, but actually, when
you're playing the game, it'syou're hoping that somebody

(12:52):
kicks you off of your spot.Let's see. So in terms of where
can you go? So the game has acentral mat, and that has all
the different locations you cango. You can do your field
expedition, your fieldexpeditions are to all of these
actual geologic formations inNorth America that are
associated with deposits ofdifferent ages. So Triassic,
Jurassic Cretaceous, the threedifferent ages in the Mesozoic.

(13:14):
It's a deck of cards. You flipit over, and it'll tell you, Oh,
this is a Cretaceous site. Youcan roll this many dice to
generate your fossils, andyou'll roll them to see how many
of the little cubes you get ofthe same color. And those come
back to your mat. They take upphysical space. You only have so
many spaces you can store them.You have the museum where you
can go and you can trade yourfossils. It's like, well, I've

(13:34):
got these Triassic fossils, butI actually really need some
Cretaceous. So there's like, anexchange rate with the Triassic
being more valuable. There's theUniversity Library where you
collect research cubes. There'sthe specimen lab where you'll
get you'll draw for this deck ofI guess I can't call them
dinosaur cards, because you alsohave marine reptiles. There's
four different groups in thebase game, plus pterosaurs.

(13:55):
There's sauropods, theropods,marine reptiles, and then
another one called genosaurs,which I want to come back to as
well, because I had never heardthat term until I played
holotype. I guess it wasoriginally ornithopods, and
that's where that scientificaccuracy, like said that. Well,
some of these actually don'tcount. Sorry, I'm getting in the
weeds a little bit.

David (14:13):
For a little spoiler. I actually having reflected on it.
I really like that they wentwith genosaurs. Yeah, I
appreciate that choice. We'llcome back to why, but that's a
little, a little teaser for thatdiscussion.

Brian (14:25):
All right, cool. And then, of course, in the middle
of the board, there is the mostimportant place, the where you
publish. There's one spot thatyou can publish at, and you can
publish one of your holotype soyou take your dinosaur cards,
it's going to have a certainamount of research cube cost,
and associated fossil cube costsyou pay that you get to publish
the holotype. Guys, what is aholotype?

David (14:47):
A holotype is the term that's used for the reference
specimen for a species. So thishappened that we use these in
paleontology. We use these inmodern biology when a scientist
identifies a new species ofwhatever dinosaur, plant,
whatever it is, the naming ofthat new species must be

(15:07):
associated with a detaileddescription of what
characterizes the species, whatfeatures make it different from
any other similar species, andyou have to designate at least
one example that shows thosefeatures. Yeah, this fossil,
this skeleton of this dinosaur,is the specimen that goes along

(15:29):
with the original description.So in the future, if somebody
wants to compare to thisspecies, this is the reference
specimen

Will (15:37):
You have established that if you need to see what I mean
by all these features. Thisspecimen has all of those
features.

David (15:45):
Yes, a lot of dinosaurs are only holotypes. Yes, there's
only one specimen that is known.It is the holotype. Other
species. There are tons offossils, and one of them is the
holotype.

Will (15:57):
And very often, a lot of those are very, still very, a
very partial specimen, like ajaw. Yeah, it's enough to know
that no one else has a jaw likethis that we've ever found
before, but this is what wehave. But it's enough to say
it's a new species

David (16:11):
Well and like Carnotaurus, the very famous
predatory dinosaur with theBulldog face and the horns above
its eyes, is only known from aholotype skeleton. Yeah, there's
one skeleton. Never found anymore of them

Brian (16:23):
Really?

David (16:24):
it's a very well preserved skeleton, yes, but
it's just the one

Jason (16:27):
And I learned while we were there at the museum, so
your friend, who is the curatorthere, back in the specimen lab,
was that Sean?

David (16:36):
Sean is the lab manager and head preparer, yep.

Jason (16:39):
So he was going, he was walking me around the mastodon
skull that he is slowlyreassembling. That is the
holotype for, apparently, amastodon that is a new species
discovered there in Gray. And hewas explaining, because it's the
holotype, he there can't be anyguesswork, like he has to be
able to match up the bonesprecisely. This little postage
stamp piece goes exactly next tothis little postage stamp piece.

(17:02):
And if there's any little partthat got wore away where it's
like, okay, maybe it's off bylike, half a millimeter or a
millimeter, he can't just stickit on there and say, this is
probably where it went, becauseit has to be absolutely precise.
And so just because it has to bethat reference that other people
have to come and say, we knowthis for 100% certain was like
this. There's no guessworkinvolved.

David (17:22):
Yes, yeah. And when you're working with a holotype,
it might be the only one youever get. Yeah, they may never
get another Mastodon skull atGray

Will (17:30):
Like, there are examples where you'll get later specimens
that may be better than yourholotype. And then you can kind
of upgrade.

David (17:36):
And there's all sorts. There are paratypes and
lectotypes and neotypes for all,like, the different ways that
you can adjust your collection.

Will (17:46):
So like, that sometimes happens, but yeah, there's tons
of examples where it's like,yeah, we have three. Two of them
are enough that we couldidentify them. And then there's
the holotype, and that's all wehave

David (17:57):
at the Gray fossil site, for example, the new species of
red panda that was discoveredthere. The holotype is a single
tooth. Yes, there are now threenearly complete skeletons, but
the original description was asingle tooth.

Brian (18:10):
There's a couple things I want to talk about there. First
of all is the fact that the Grayfossil site is in Tennessee, and
we're talking about red pandas.So that's worth pausing and
talking about. Is that therewere red pandas in Tennessee, 5
million years ago, 6 millionyears ago. It's about 5 million
years ago, not to mentionalligators. So that was really
cool. Go to Gray if you have theopportunity.

Will (18:31):
Yeah, red pandas, gators, rhinos, rhinos, camels, horses,
super weird time.

Brian (18:36):
Snakes, songbirds, tons of snakes, everything.

Will (18:40):
Well, it's a fun thing, because there's a whole bunch of
things there, like the turtlesand a lot of the birds, that if
you only saw those, when youtime traveled back to the fossil
site, you wouldn't have knownyou time traveled except that it
was too warm, and then a bunchof the other things that if you
only saw those, you would havebe very hard to convince someone
we did not take them to likeAfrica or something. They're

(19:03):
like

David (19:03):
those rhinos and elephants and stuff.

Will (19:04):
You can't move me and time travel the same time. That
doesn't count. So no, you stillare in Tennessee, I promise.
Yes.

Brian (19:10):
I also found out that there was native citrus there,
which is crazy. Yeah. So again,because we're kind of plant
guys, a little bit right, whenyou publish, you can publish a
holotype, sort of declaring anew species or publishing a new
species. But that's not the onlything that you can do. You can
also publish towards thesecommon goals, basically a
synthesis or a research paper orreview where you're publishing

(19:32):
based on what other people havedone. So for that, you have to
pay the research cubes if youhaven't published all the
corresponding holotypes. It'slike a public goal. You'll also
have a secret, private goal thatyou're trying to have people not
see what it is. But it's usuallynot that hard to figure out,
presumably, if you played thegame a couple more times. So
like, I'm pretty sure thatJason's going for a bunch of
Triassic stuff on purpose,right? That is the basics of the

(19:55):
game. I think. Is there anythingthat I crucially missed all.

Jason (19:59):
Only thing I can think of is the game tracks how many
total holotypes are published,and as you go up, it unlocks
various things in the game. Sowe do a reset of the museum, it
unlocks little upgrades. Andtypical thing, you get four
upgrades over the course of thegame. There are five or six to
choose from, so you never getthem all, but they're a way of
getting more powerful. And Ilike it because this, this game

(20:21):
caught me off guard with howmuch strategic depth there is,
because there's a lot ofdecision points you can make
that have effects on the game.And possibly due to all the
10,000 games per second playtesting, none of them is
clearly, oh, this is the the oneupgrade to rule them all. This
is the one path that'sdefinitely it all seems like
there's a good argument for anychoice you could make.

Brian (20:43):
I don't know every one of us chose that extra storage
closet for fossils as the firstthing. It's so tempting.

Jason (20:49):
That's just because we're all hoarders

Will (20:52):
So it's so nice to get that, but I want the backpack

David (20:56):
The game also, because there are so many different
options, it allows you to dosomething that I always find
myself doing when I play boardgames, which is role playing a
little bit getting a little bitinto, like, leaning into a
schtick. Yeah, I'm not justtrying to win. I am sort of
trying to embody a character andfollow a certain style. What

(21:19):
would I want to publish? Howwould I want to publish? And I
do that partially because it'sfun and partially because it's
an easy way to get over decisionparalysis, yes, which I get a
lot in games that have a lot ofstrategic pieces.

Jason (21:32):
I will say it was really fun watching you guys, because I
was here making strategicdecisions based off of point
values, and just watching yougeek out or like, Oh, this is a
cool dinosaur, I have to publishthis one!

David (21:42):
Oh yes. We were both like, repeatedly. I was, Brian
was very upset with me, both ofus I think, because we kept
throwing away valuable cardsbecause we liked the other ones
better. I was like, Yeah, butthis is Triceratops. I gotta do
Triceratops.

Brian (21:57):
I think you had triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, Rex.
What else did you have?

David (22:00):
I had, I managed. I was very proud I didn't win, but I
was very proud that I got T Rex,dinonicus. I think Triceratops
was the one I didn't you almost,almost managed Triceratops. I
got a bunch of the classicStegosaurus I think.

Brian (22:15):
Yeah, you got the ones that come in the sets of plastic
dinosaurs toys.

Will (22:18):
Exactly. Yeah, yes,

David (22:20):
yeah. I almost had a full tube.

Unknown (22:23):
You just need a random Dimetrodon in there. Exactly!

Jason (22:27):
It's like, these dinosaur cards. I mean, they're, they're
along the lines of a lot of thegood science games. They have
random science facts on themthat have nothing to do with the
game, but that are still reallycool. They have a little line of
text that explains what the namemeans. So, Tyrannosaurus Rex, it
was like, like, was it tyrantking lizard or something.
Gojirosaurus, which is Godzillalizard. And they also have who

(22:50):
first published that particulardinosaur specimen and what year
it was in. And some of these areback into the mid 1800s and some
of them are just a handful ofyears ago. So they have a wide
spread.

Brian (23:01):
Some of them must have been contemporary with the
publication of the game, right?2022, can't be anything newer
than that. Yeah, yes.

Jason (23:07):
High point of the game is when I published a holotype that
yout wo didn't recognize. It waslike, Wait, what, What's that
thing?

Brian (23:14):
It was fun?

David (23:14):
They included some, some really recent and well, and I
assume that that was part of thenecessity of spreading it across
time effectively and right. Ifyou, if you need a certain
number of Triassic dinosaurs,you're gonna start pulling
obscure ones. There's not thatmany famous Triassic dinosaurs.

Will (23:32):
you're gonna run out of recognizable ones, because
there's like three.

David (23:37):
But of course, this is how they become recognizable.
Yes, is that the names get usedin popular uses like this, yeah,

Brian (23:44):
speaking of which, though, there's one thing that I
wish the cards did have and theydon't, and that's a
pronunciation guide

Will (23:49):
that would be a really nice feature for people seeing
them for the first time,especially like, if this is the
first time you've ever seen youknow, even ones that aren't are
not Uber obscure, but likeCoelophysis, where,
Or Deinonychus.
yeah, those pronunciations arenot intuitive. If you aren't
used to those kinds of names alot

Brian (24:09):
Yeah, paraceraloloph-- Wait, I screwed it up!

David (24:11):
Yes, if they had included pronunciation so Brian and Jason
the whole time we were playing,were commenting on having fun,
watching us react to the cards.Yeah, if they had included
pronunciations, you also wouldhave watched us go. That's not
how I say it!

Will (24:24):
Gross. No, uh-uh!

David (24:25):
this one's wrong. This one's incorrect.

Will (24:27):
Yeah, you, that, I have been part of a number of
conversations wherepronunciation fights break out
of, well, I heard it'stechnically supposed to be said
that way, and everyone elsegoes, Blah! No, I I refuse.

Brian (24:39):
Wait. Does the holotype not require pronunciation
guidance?

David (24:44):
It does not.

Brian (24:44):
Oh no,

Jason (24:45):
I'm gonna say, I guess if we get technical, they're all in
Latin. Anyways, a dead language,so no one's gonna come argue
with it, except other peoplestudying dead Latin things

Brian (24:53):
and all those dead Romans.

David (24:54):
To do a little just the littlest of tangents. Taxonomic
names are all Latinized versionsof roots from various other
languages that are thenpronunciation modified based on
whatever language the personspeaking speaks. So not only is
there not a correctpronunciation, there also isn't

(25:15):
you can't have consistentpronunciation because English
speakers are not the only peoplewho talk about dinosaurs and an
Italian speaker or a Russianspeaker or a Chinese speaker are
not going to be expected topronounce the this list of
letters the same way.

Brian (25:30):
I'm starting to think that the omission of
pronunciation was not anoversight, but a purposeful
choice.

David (25:36):
Had I been consulted on this game, I would have
suggested leaving it out.

Will (25:39):
Yeah, it definitely simplifies it well, because,
yeah, there's a bunch that,like, I've had ones that I've
shifted on that came up I was ona friend's podcast, and I said
AnKYlosaurus. And they had amoment like, Oh, have I been
saying that wrong my whole life?No, I used to say ANKylosaurus.
Then I hung out with bunches ofpaleontologists, and they tend
to say anKYlosaurus more often,but it doesn't matter, like we

(26:03):
made up the name for this,

David (26:05):
long as all the letters are accounted for. You're doing
okay, yep.

Brian (26:09):
Do I talk about some of the science in the game? Yeah?

Jason (26:11):
Okay, oh, let's get into there's I. I'm looking forward
to this because I think there'ssome deep dives we can go here.

Brian (26:16):
Yeah. So do we want to start with the general, or do we
want to start with the weirdones?

Jason (26:20):
Let's start with the general

Brian (26:21):
God. I'm trying to think of the right way to say this.
How accurate is science in thegame? But I'm not really talking
about the dinosaurs. I'm talkingabout the depiction of
paleontology, yeah, because thisreally is a game about being a
paleontologist. So, so how isit? I mean, we had our own
assumptions, but having not beenin an academic paleontology
environment, our assumptions maybe wrong.

Will (26:43):
All in all, I liked it.

David (26:44):
Yeah, I think it was very they did a good job.

Will (26:47):
Yes, I think it captures a lot of the stuff well, we made a
discovery while we were playingthat it makes the most sense if
you picture that you're allworking in the same department,
that you're all working at thesame museum or same university,
and you're having to sharespace. So that's part. You're
not rival universities bumpingeach other out of spots. You're
going, it's my turn in the lab.Get out. I have, I have the,

(27:11):
the, you know, electron, thescanning equipment, or the CT
machine. Signed this out forthis time period, it's my time.
Go. Go work on your your paper,like, go work on your writing,
which is also a nice way to lookat the like. The benefit to
getting bumped is the like,listen, you've been in the
computer lab for the last fivehours. Get out of here. Go do

(27:32):
something else.

Brian (27:33):
Are we encouraging people to touch grass? Or deal with
their hyper fixations? Yep,

David (27:39):
I do like that. Obviously, it's a simplified
because it has to be, becauseit's a board game, but I like
the way that they translated abunch of different real world
aspects of research to the gamethat you can go excavating,
which is a real thing that wedo, you can go utilize museum

(27:59):
archives and museum collectionsto get the specimens that you
need for your research, you cango to the library and read up on
background and all that stuff.But they did a pretty good job
accounting for a bunch of thethings that are in real life a
part of this process.

Will (28:17):
One of my favorite things they did with that accounting is
that they split up gettingfossils. So excavating fossils,
get you the cubes representingTriassic, Jurassic Cretaceous,
but you don't know what thosefossils are yet, because they
have not been cleaned up and putback together and analyzed. So
you don't get a identifieddinosaur until you get it from

(28:40):
the preparation from the labthat has now cleaned it up and
put it back together. So, like,you may have an idea, because
that happens all the time, whereit's like, yeah, we're, we're,
we know it's some kind ofsauropod, but we don't know what
kind yet, because it's still inthe rock and or it's not put
together yet, so we haven'tconfirmed that it's anything
that we haven't already seen. SoI like this, yeah, you know what

(29:01):
age it is, because you know whatrock you were digging in, but
until it's been worked through,you don't yet know what dinosaur
you're dealing with. I thoughtthat was a nice separation.

Brian (29:13):
And even if you have the fossils, even if you have the
specimen, you still have to godo the research. Is this new? So
you need the research cubes too.

Will (29:19):
Yep, you have to confirm it

David (29:21):
And that's a huge part, is because people will often
ask, Well, how do you know it'sa new species? And the answer
is, you do a lot of reading.Yep, you do a lot of reading,
and you do a lot of comparisonsto cover as many all of the
bases that you can. And then youhave to write that all down to
prove it Yes, so that whenanother scientist goes, how did
they know this was a newspecies? All of the, you've

(29:44):
shown your work, yes,

Brian (29:45):
one of the weird things in the game is that there's only
the one spot to publish. And Idon't understand why only one
person in the department canpublish at a time. We thought
maybe there's a copy editor, orsomething

Will (29:56):
I was gonna say, that's the biggest reason, for me, it
makes sense for it to be onedepartment. It that it's like,
listen, we're we announce thepapers

David (30:03):
Yeah, when the press release. We don't want our press
releases to be competing witheach other.

Will (30:08):
That's the only way that one really makes sense.

David (30:10):
I also the arrangement of what fossil sites and dinosaurs
and other creatures wereavailable. I was really
impressed. Yeah, I really likethat. They used real life fossil
deposits, like, these wereplaces you'd pick up a card and
we would go, Oh, cool. I'veheard of this. Or sometimes

(30:31):
you'd be like, Oh, the Morrisonformation, yeah, this is a
famous one. This is very cool.And the same thing with the
dinosaurs, the dinosaurs, wewere using the pterosaur
expansion, the marine reptiles.I like that it isn't just
shortcut generic dinosaur fossilsite. It isn't just shortcut
generic predatory dinosaur. Andit also isn't just all the

(30:53):
famous ones. They did a nicespread of different types of
animals, different ages offossil deposits, which I thought
was really nice, because that,you know, when you're a kid,
this is how you learn about newdinosaurs and different
locations where you find fossilsis you see them in books or you
see them in games and stuff.Yeah, there are. There are

(31:14):
absolutely fossil sites that Ilearned about as a kid because
they were in, like, the MagicSchool Bus computer game. Yes.

Brian (31:20):
Oh, really?

David (31:21):
Yeah, the magic school bus to the time of the dinosaurs
computer game was maybe my mostplayed computer game when I was
a kid. That was super fun.

Brian (31:28):
So holotype does, and we didn't mess with this. It has a
stripped down, they call it thebasal version, where simplified
rules to play with kids. Oh,that's great, nice to kind of
help deal with that sort ofstrategic difficulty, because a
very deep tactical game. Well, Imean, I say that; I've played
games with Jason's daughters,they would easily kick my butt,

(31:50):
so I think a lot of it is howearly you get them started, and

Will (31:53):
that that was something I liked from the gameplay side of
it is that there's no rocketlauncher. That's the if, if you
get this, you're you might aswell we could call the game here
sort of thing,

David (32:04):
you don't win if you get T Rex.

Will (32:06):
Yeah, and I like that, because it also meant that you
can be kind of competitive. Butalso, if I want to just focus on
my pet project, or focus on,like, I got really into the
group the common goals, becauseI not, A, I liked that concept.
But also that's a fun thing toadd, that every now and then

(32:26):
you're doing research that's noton a new species, it's on
predatory dinosaurs or like thebromolites study of we're
looking at coprolites andregurgitalites and this category
of things, not specifically oneI found. I like that it meant
that you can, you can kind of bestrategic on your own, even if

(32:48):
you're not, like, I didn't havea full grasp of the game because
it was my first time, but Icould go, Oh, that's
interesting. So I'm gonna focusmy efforts this way. And it
wasn't the only option to befocusing on. It. So I liked that
part of the gameplay,

David (33:02):
and to piggyback off of what you were talking about a
little bit, because you broughtup the community goals, sort of
the Global Goals, which Ithought was a really fun part,
as Brian you mentioned before,that is a relatively common
thing in board games like this,and I think it's so fitting in a
science themed game, becausescience is, by its very nature,

(33:26):
a community effort. Yes, I thinkthat if you know to segue a
little bit into ways that thisgame is maybe not as good a
representation of real lifescience, the game is
competitive, because that's thekind of game that it is. And I
think that, you know, sciencecan be competitive. For sure,
there's lots of competitiveaspects in science, but that's

(33:48):
not the part that we like,celebrate and encourage a whole
lot in science. Like ideally, wewant to all be working together
and cooperative. And I like thatthis game isn't just a
competitive board game, thatthere is this acknowledgement of
the research you're doing iscontributing to global

(34:09):
understanding of these topics. Ithink that's a really nice, you
know, it's, it's not, not quitea footnote, but it's sort of an
aside on top of all of thecompetitive research stuff in
the game, but I like that theyincluded it in there.

Will (34:23):
Yes, absolutely.

Brian (34:24):
Yeah, it's a nice balance. The competitive is the
cooperative, but you're doingthe same thing. But even if this
person wins the game, look atall the cool science we learned
anyway, right? Yes,

Will (34:35):
well, and unlike on the note of it being competitive,
and like the fact that it canbe, but that's not the way, you
know, it should be, quote,unquote, but there is an
argument to be made of well, ifwe're trying to simulate it,
then there should be some. Oneof the notes that I think falls
into that category that I foundvery charming is your personal
goal. Because, yeah, it's like,there's absolutely scientists

(34:56):
where it's like, what do youstudy? You know, crocs, and it's
like, why? Because they're neat!Because that's my favorite,
because I want to study them,because they're the best, and
that like, I'm gonna use anyexcuse I can to get to go see
more crocs. Like, yeah, you havethat happens all the time, where
researchers have their littlepersonal projects, and it's
like, is this what needs to bestudied? It's what I want to

(35:17):
study.

David (35:19):
That a personal goal. I mentioned before, that sort of
role playing aspect. For me, thepersonal goals were like, info
on my character sheet where Iwas like, Oh, I'm a marine
reptile researcher. Yes, that'swhat this personal goal tells
me, is that I love marinereptiles. And so I was like,
Yeah, I'm gonna scoop up all themarine reptiles. That's right.

Brian (35:37):
So we haven't talked about this, but the three
different meeples for the threedifferent things. I mean,
they're personified, like thepaleontologist is a little
taller. They're basically, youcould tell them apart based on
their hats. Yes, yes,

David (35:50):
the grad student had their graduation cap on.

Will (35:52):
Yeah. I thought that was very cute,

Brian (35:54):
which they used the whole time. And I remember will, when
you were doing yours, you weregiving them names. Said your
grad student was Ian Malcolm, soyou had him sitting on his side
like he was injured in JurassicPark, hilarious. But I did want
to make sure we come back tothis idea of the different
groups. So the different cards,I don't just want to call them
dinosaurs. What is the proper Iguess reptiles? What's the

(36:16):
proper term I should use that isencompassing of both marine
reptiles and the dinosaurs andthe pterosaurs.

David (36:22):
You can call them reptiles. If you want to be
scientific, you could call themtaxa, yeah, as they are all
individually named species andsuch. And so they're taxa,

Brian (36:35):
right? Well, the the taxa, then that we have, they're
based on a couple differentthings, the age right, Triassic,
Jurassic or Cretaceous, thediet. So omnivore, carnivore or
herbivore, that was pretty muchit. And then they have these
sort of phylogenetic groupings.So we've got our sauropods, our

(36:57):
long necked dinosaurs, ourtheropods, mostly your T Rex,
you're like meat-eating twolegged there were a couple, I'm
thinking therizinosaur, yes,which was, you know, I think the
one herbivore, maybe not theonly, but the only one I can
think of. And then we had amarine reptiles, which is not
one group, right? Yeah, that, Iknow three are there four?

Will (37:17):
There's a bunch. There's three big ones, yeah, the three
big, famous ones of plesiosaursand pliosaurs, which are grouped
together, the mosasaurs, andthen the ichthyosaurs, which are
the like dolphin, Shark shapedones.

David (37:32):
But there was at least one, I don't know if it was like
a nothasaur, yes. In the game,there are other smaller groups
of marine reptiles, okay,

Brian (37:40):
and then there's the genosaurs, and I had never heard
that term before. So what isthat?

David (37:46):
Dinosaurs are cladistically, right? The way
that we classify them? There arethree major groups of dinosaurs.
There are sauropods, the longneck dinosaurs which you
mentioned, theropods, the twolegged, mostly meat eating
dinosaurs which you mentioned.And then there's ornithischians,
which is all the rest, mostlyherbivores, mostly quadrupeds,

(38:07):
that includes your Triceratopsand your Stegosaurus and your
Ankylosaurus and yourparasaurolophus and all of
those. Genisauria is a subset ofornithischian dinosaurs, but
it's a subset that includesbasically all of them. I think
the only thing that is anornithischian, but not within

(38:27):
genisauria, are some reallybasal groups like
heterodontosaurids might fallout of it. So genosaur basically
is the same thing asornithischian. It's just that
other, third major branch ofdinosaurs. And I was thinking,
because when we when it came upon the cards, I was like, I
don't know what genisauria is.Off the top of my head, that's

(38:47):
that's not a very commonly usedterm. It's a very smooth
solution to the problem that theword ornithischia is a really
weird word to read and to try tosay if you're not familiar with
it, and genosaur is an actualtaxonomic term that isn't used
very much, but basically meansthe same thing as ornithischian

Will (39:10):
well. And it's, it's like, I'm familiar with ornithischian,
so there's definitely a part ofme that's like, genosaur What?
But I know that if you if I wasintroduced to both cold, I would
go with genosaur. Genosaurs abetter word, that's more fun to
say

David (39:22):
It's much more accessible. I do want to mention
one more thing about the becauseI think this is an important
thing. When you mentioned themeeples on the note of the the
meeples the characters that youhave, one thing that did stand
out to me about when we wereplaying the game, it was really
the one thing of the game that Iwent a little bit like, oh, I
don't love this representation,which is that your three

(39:44):
characters are thepaleontologist, the grad student
and the field assistant, andthere is a very clear hierarchy
of who gets to do what, andwho's more important than the
other ones. The field assistantdoesn't get to publish. the
paleontologist gets to kick theother two off of any spots. And
I think that that does reflect,you know, some real life

(40:06):
hierarchical systems in placeslike universities. But I do
think that it also a little bitreinforces these, this caste
system, almost power dynamicthat, like no field field
assistants absolutely canpublish stuff. They're usually
working alongside other people.I also this is much more of a

(40:28):
personal semantics thing, butseparating paleontologist from
grad student makes me thehackles are up a little bit
because I'm like, Well, ifyou're a grad student, if you if
you published a dinosaur, andyou're out doing field work and
you're doing the research, yeah,you're a paleontologist, yeah?
So, for the sake of the game, Ithink that that, like hierarchy
system mechanically, works verywell. I think that it's really

(40:51):
an engaging way to play, but itit reflects upon real world
paleontology in a way that Ithink is a little bit overly
stereotypical, yeah, and it's alittle icky too, but it's a
little icky. And, you know, Ithink that, you know, not to as
a slight against the people whomade the game. I think they did
a great job, but that is a kindof real world aspect of

(41:12):
paleontology that is a littlebit icky in its gamified form.
Yeah, yeah.

Jason (41:18):
I've got other questions, though, about the science here.
One is about the like, theplaces we get the fossils from.
So you get three types offossils. Your Triassic, your
Jurassic, your Cretaceous, andthey're different. The older
ones are more valuable. But whatare these things like? The game
is Mesozoic, North America. Soall three of these periods are
inside the Mesozoic. Like, whatis the Mesozoic. What are these

(41:41):
little three subdivisions? Howdo people draw boundaries
between them? I assume anasteroid was involved in the
last one, but I don't know aboutany of the other so, like, what?
What defines these threeperiods? What defines the three
periods?

Will (41:54):
Absolutely So, yeah, the Mesozoic is often what we call
the age of dinosaurs, and

David (41:59):
from roughly 250 million to 66 million years ago. Yes,

Will (42:04):
and like all period, you know, all phases of Earth
history, we break it up intosubsection like the Triassic
Jurassic Cretaceous also havesubdivisions that we can that
you get into when you're youresearch is zooming in even
further or looking at a veryparticular time frame. There are

(42:25):
names for those. These typicallyare associated with rock layers
and deposits and sedimentlayers. You will find ages like
there are the ancient mammalages, the large mammal ages,
land mammal ages. Had to get myterm right in North America that
is based off of what fossils arepresent. But typically we're

(42:48):
basing it off of using geologicsediments to distinguish and the
borders are often at majorshifts,

David (42:56):
environmental changes, ecological changes the asteroid
at the end of the Cretaceous isnot so much. There is a
geological layer that you cansee. Yeah, that's asteroid dust.
But the shift from Cretaceous towhat comes next is an ecological
shift, because there was a massextinction, yep, yep.

Will (43:14):
And mass extinctions are very commonly the book ends

David (43:17):
It's great way to distinguish between before and
after, yep, and

Will (43:22):
so, yeah, we can identify these either based on sediment
types that there are certainthings that you know, we can age
and you know, well, it has to bethis, because the, you know,
radioactive elements that are inthis rock date it to that time
period. And then, very often,the fossils that we find of this

(43:43):
group is only a Triassic group.They were, they were in the
middle of the Triassic. Sothere's not even a way they
could be scooting over the line.So for sure, we're definitely in
the Triassic. And so there arefossil sites that are already
well known for what age theyare. Anything you find here is
going to be that age. You justmight be finding some new thing

(44:04):
from that age that you haven'tseen before.

Jason (44:06):
So I like that there is a part of this game that is the
different trace fossils, yeah,and I'd like to actually talk a
bit about those. So they have afew different kinds. They've got
the eggs, they've gotcoprolites, so poop, also
dinosaur tracks, bugs and Amber,I think, or something like that.
I don't remember how many are inthe base game and how many are
in the expansion. How importantare these to paleontology, like

(44:29):
what we've already talked about,some of the ones. But what other
types of trace fossils arethere? What role do they play in
terms of paleontology andfiguring things out? And the
ultimate question is, like, Howlong until we can actually get
DNA out of the fossil mosquitoand makeJurassic freaking Park?

David (44:44):
right, right. So trace fossil, fossils are categorized
broadly into two categories,body fossils, which are the
remains of the body parts,bones, teeth, leaves, anything
that was part of the body of theorganism. Trace fossils are
indirect evidence of theorganism. Footprints are trace

(45:04):
fossils, burrows, poop,regurgitalites, colalights, all
the things that we were talkingabout before Amber is technic,
is is sort of a plant tracefossil, because Amber is
produced by plants. Eggs are atrace fossil. Trace fossils are
extraordinarily important,because they can not only tell
you what sort of things mighthave been around if you don't

(45:26):
have body fossils, but they alsoreveal behaviors and lifestyles.
You know, footprints tell youhow an animal was moving around
its environment. Nests with eggstell you a lot about
reproduction. Coprolites, poop.Tell you about diet. You cut
open a coprolite, and there'swhat this animal ate. So you get

(45:48):
a lot of really fascinatinginformation that you often can't
get, from bones and teeth. toJason's question about amber in
mosquitoes and DNA, I have ananswer to that that is a short
story The earliest reports ofDNA coming out of bugs and Amber
was from the early 90s, aroundthe time that Jurassic Park came

(46:10):
out. And then throughout the90s, there were a bunch more
reports of DNA from Amber. Andthen as more and more time went
on, those studies were revisedas we got better and better at
recognizing DNA contamination inour specimens, like what we were
talking about before and after adecade or so, general consensus

(46:32):
became that those were allaccidents, that those were all
errors, that there was not DNAin those bugs in amber. More
recent research after that triedto estimate how long DNA could
potentially last in theenvironment, and estimated that
DNA could not probably last morethan a couple million years,
which is not nearly enough toget to dinosaurs. And then my

(46:53):
favorite this was a 2013 studythat sought to see, okay, what
does DNA breakdown actually looklike in amber. And they tested
with all the updated methods,two pieces of Amber from museum
specimens, one of which was, Ithink, 10,000 years old or so,
and they found no evidence ofpreserved DNA in the bug in the

(47:15):
amber, and another piece of preAmber that was about 50 or 60
years old, and they found noevidence of preserved DNA in
that bug in amber. Yeah, 50years old. It seems that DNA is
actually extra bad at preservingin amber. The amber is actually
an awful place to try topreserve DNA.

Will (47:37):
It's one of the worst ones you could pick if you were
trying to save some DNA. Aside,

David (47:42):
Amber does a great job. I know, protecting like tissues
and stuff from scavengers anddecomposers, but it does a very
bad job protecting DNA from heatand moisture, which is what
breaks down DNA. So to answeryour question, never I'm so
sorry. I'm so sorry, Jason,bummer.

Brian (48:09):
So I think we have a little bit of time for nitpicks,
and then we should probably wrapup with our with our grades, if
that's okay.

David (48:16):
I've got a nitpick to come right off of that coprolite
discussion. There is astipulation within this game
that the trace fossils,coprolites, cannot be used for
marine reptiles, that you canonly attach a coprolite, poop,
to the dinosaurs and pterosaursand such. And when we were

(48:38):
playing the game, I think it wasBrian who, who asked, Do you Do
you not get coprolites frommarine fossils? And I said,
Yeah, you do. You absolutelycould get coprolites from marine
fossils.

Will (48:48):
There's a famous one that has a whole bunch of shark bites
on it.

David (48:50):
Yeah? It's a, it's a croc poop with shark bite marks in
it.

Brian (48:55):
Oh, lovely, .

David (48:56):
Yeah, absolutely you can get fossil poops from ocean
animals.

Brian (49:01):
I'm sorry. I'm just, okay. So it pooped, a bunch of
sharks nibbled on it, and thenit got buried.

David (49:06):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, that is exactly what happened.

Brian (49:08):
Paleontology is weird,

David (49:09):
yeah, coprolites in the in the water are so fun because
you'll see like a shark or acroc coprolite, and you can see
the shape of the copper lighthas a flat surface where it
landed, yeah, you can see thisis the side that it landed on,
yeah, and it got squished intothat shape. Oh, man. A lot of

(49:30):
fish coprolites are spiralshaped, yeah, because of the
shape of their sphincter.

Brian (49:33):
Like goldfish.

Will (49:34):
Yeah. Like it's when you watch it happen in an aquarium.
It looks like that when itfossilizes, yep.

David (49:40):
A lot of coprolites have like, a pinched off end. Yeah,
it looks like poop. And that'swhat it is. It's poop.

Brian (49:45):
Are there? Are there left handed and right handed fish
coprolites then?

David (49:49):
That is great question. I don't know, off the top my head,
but probably,

Brian (49:54):
I don't know what would cause a spiral, but I mean,
something's making a twist.Yeah?

Will (49:59):
Yeah, this is a very nitpicky nit pick. Is also with
the trace fossils, that the wayyou get points off of trace
fossils is by adding them to apublication when you publish a
holotype. Which I get theconcept of you're applying of,
we, you know, we, I ampublishing Triceratops. And here
are some Triceratops footprints.But that's not actually how we

(50:21):
publish trace fossils. When wepublish a trace fossil, we
publish a ichnotaxon, which is ataxonomic name for that trace
fossil. Because the reality isthat usually you cannot match a
trace fossil to its owner. Youcan get close a lot of time,
like you almost certainly couldgo these are ceratopsian feet,

(50:43):
because we have the feet of manyceratopsians.

David (50:45):
Right, and there's a triceratops skeleton, yeah, 30
meters away,

Will (50:49):
but we don't have the fleshy pad of that foot, so
there's a lot of information inthis track that is missing from
the bones. Like you know, if youlooked at a duck's foot versus a
duck's foot bones. That's a lotof webbing and material that you
don't actually have, and you maynot actually be able to confirm

(51:09):
on the bone, like you may beable to say, Yeah, this is
definitely a web foot. But howwebbed? Did it go all the way to
the end of the toes? Did it stophalfway down? And so finding a
trace fossil is not actuallysomething you can typically,
unless you have a overabundanceof evidence attach to a known
species. So it gets its own nameand suspected, and its own

(51:29):
holotype--and its ownholotype--trace fossils get
their own holotypes. And the onethat stands out the most for
that is that amber, like ambertypically you're describing,
like the bugs and stuff that gottrapped in that amber, and
that's its own fossil. So theamber itself is kind of a trace
fossil, but whatever's in it,that's just a fossil. Yeah. And
so those you really should bepublishing on their own, yes,

Brian (51:52):
okay, so trace fossils are not bonus points tht get
tacked into other fossils.

Will (51:57):
Yeah, they're, they're their own study, their own
separate study, they'll be inassociation, but you would have
had to already publish thatholotype, typically, to then be
able to connect them.

David (52:08):
I think that's a great nitpick. I hadn't thought about
but that. But that's a reallygood point.

Brian (52:12):
I mean, I would love to nitpick as well that my only
nitpick, if this even counts, isthat these these people,
apparently never have to writegrants or teach classes. Yeah,

Jason (52:21):
that's a great that's not other. It's like, I'm I'm not
sad that's missing. Like, I liketeaching classes. But if I could
ditch the grant writing I would.

David (52:29):
It would be so cool if you could, if one of the places
on the mat was, like, scientificconference, yeah, and you could
like, exchange, research cubes,or it

Will (52:37):
That could be an expansion, adds a little bit to
the board, and you go, meet.

Brian (52:41):
It's like a sidetrack for publication, right? Yes, yes,
yeah. You can, like,

Will (52:45):
you can get almost to publication, but it's not quite
publication.

David (52:49):
You go to the conference and it like, ups all of your
resources, and it just, it'sjust motivation, yes, or you
get, like, new personal goals.Yeah, you could acquire a new
personal goal,

Brian (53:00):
We need more opportunities for
collaborations. We need jointgoals. Public goals, exactly,
private goals, between twopeople. That's making it way too
complicated.

David (53:09):
Expand the global goals,

Brian (53:12):
Yeah, that's not a bad idea.

Will (53:13):
That actually would be pretty cool. Like, switch one
out, yeah, yeah,

David (53:16):
oh, switching one out would be mean. That's like, I
don't like that on.

Brian (53:21):
It's like, nah we don't want to do this one. This one.
This one's not importantanymore. No one's funding it.

Will (53:24):
That makes people go, no!

Brian (53:27):
that actually would be funny. You go to a conference
and you have to chuck one, thenyou pull it a new one. Anyway,
anyway. Let's do our lettergrades. Let's start with the
fun. How fun is holotype toplay? We do typically kind of
use a little bit of gradeinflation. We often startat a B,
you guys don't have to do thisif you don't want to.

Jason (53:50):
My understanding is that you very specifically chose not
to be in academia.

David (53:55):
I haven't graded a paper in years. I mean, for fun, I
would give it an A, yeah, I hada ton of fun playing. No, I
really enjoyed it. I named mymeeples, yeah, I had Ellie,
Rhonda and Darcy, yep, which Iwas very happy with. They were
great. They were kicking butt.

Will (54:12):
Yeah, no. I mean, at the worst, if you like, like, low A,
but yeah, no, I think it's, it'sup there. That was a very fun
game.

Brian (54:21):
So A, A-minus then? yeah, yeah, okay,

Jason (54:24):
yeah, I'd give this a solid A venturing into A-plus. I
mean, I think of the of thegames we have played it as part
of this podcast, this is one ofthe most fun. This is, this is
right up there with the dreadedWingspan that we can't get away
with mentioning. But I say it'svaluable on this one, because,
darn it, bird are dinosaurs.

Brian (54:41):
Yes, that's a very good point. Our top scorers have all
had some kind of dinosaurs ordinosaur like thing in them. I
guess cytosis didn't. But youknow, those dinosaurs had cells,
so it's fine. I'm biased becauseI had a fantastic time playing
the game with you guys. It wasso much fun doing it. I'm not
gonna let that influence me,though, because I don't have to,

(55:02):
because it's an A because forme, it's how likely am I to grab
it and bring it with us. And, Imean, I took it with us when we
went home for Thanksgiving toplay with my family, like

Jason (55:11):
you took it in a 14 hour car ride. Like that's that's
dedication

Brian (55:15):
so on the science side, why don't I go ahead and start i
It's interesting, because thescience in terms of the
dinosaurs, the formations, allof that clearly accurate. But
this really isn't about that.It's about paleontology itself.
Now there's always somesimplification there has to be,
because it's a game. It's notgoing to be 100% accurate, but I
think this deserves an A too. Ithink there was a clear

(55:36):
intention, intentionality in thedesign of the metaphor of the
game to do a good job ofrepresenting what it was trying
to represent.

Will (55:43):
Yeah, no, I think I agree, because like that, you know,
there are nitpicks. There aredefinitely categories that and
for our specific field ofexpertise stand out, but, but
none of those were likedistracting me, you know,
aggressively or anything. So,yeah, I think it's...B feels too

(56:05):
low for any of those. So A stillfeels fitting because it's it
was satisfying in the thescientific regard, right?

Brian (56:15):
You can go in between. You could give it a B plus or an
A minus, if you want.

David (56:20):
That's true. That's true. I was gonna say I would give it
an A minus at the lowest, yes, Amaybe an A minus if I'm feeling,
you know, critical, if I'mgrouchy that day. But I think
because of what you guys justsaid, that there's clearly a
great intent here. I think thatalso I'm grading in comparison

(56:40):
to other games. And it is veryrare that you see a game put in
this level of effort to beaccurate, not only to be
accurate, but to be thorough, toinclude a wide range of real
life science stuff. There are acouple things in there that made
me go, I don't love theimplication of you know, you've
sort of translated this thingover from the real world, and

(57:01):
it's a little bit Ick. But theother thing that I think gets at
the A is that stepping aside,stepping back from the hyper
specifics of the science, Ithink this is exactly the kind
of game that would make somebodyexcited about science. Yeah, I
think getting to play throughthe process of it using a lot of

(57:23):
the real pieces of science, Idon't think that the
inaccuracies or the weird sortof parts of it would be enough
to counter the fact that this isan extremely fun scientific
interaction like this is thekind of game that I could see a
future paleontologist sayingwhen I was a kid, I played

(57:46):
holotype, yeah, and that's how Igot excited about dinosaurs.
Yeah.

Brian (57:50):
I hope that happens. I hope that happens. That's gonna
happen sometime, right? It's gotto

Jason (57:56):
I'm also going to give this a solid A for these same
reasons. It's a goodrepresentation. It has a lot of
details about paleontology andthe dinosaurs and the dig sites,
everything that don't have to bethere. But they made the effort
of doing it. They made theeffort to get a lot of stuff
there and to, I think you saidabout our other dinosaur game
[Wingspan], Brian, you can'tplay this game without learning

(58:18):
something about dinosaurs. Yeah,yeah, yeah. And I actually think
I really like the representationof paleontology, because I think
a lot of people, like your sortof casual, like child
paleontologists, think thatpeople are all out in the field
digging up dinosaurs all thetime. And isn't it great, like
that scene in Jurassic Park,it's like, well, that's part of

(58:39):
it, but this actually shows youhave to do a lot of book
research, you have to go back tothe lab, you have to go to
museums. Most of your work isactually not at the field site.
And I think that's actually agood way of portraying what the
real job is like.

Will (58:55):
Yeah, no, I agree, because it is so often portrayed as it's
digging up a bone and going Aha,Eureka, right? I have found a
new species.

David (59:04):
I think that one of the nicest things that I can say
about this game is that it feelsgreat for one of the main
reasons that Jurassic Park themovie feels great, yeah, which
is that it is not just aboutdinosaurs, it is about
paleontology. Yes. And thatreally sets it apart. And that
really makes it entrenched inthe science--Yeah--behind this

(59:28):
field.

Brian (59:28):
Well, we should probably call it there. Oh, sure, we
could keep talking and talking.I would love to do so, but, but
I do have to edit this at somepoint.

Will (59:38):
I know the feeling.

Brian (59:41):
Where would you like our listeners, this very small
number of people who listen toour podcast

Jason (59:48):
Hey hey hey, be optimistic! We could have people
from five years in the future ofour millions and millions of
subscribers who are coming backto listen to Holotype.

Will (59:55):
Yes, absolutely. There you go,

Brian (59:58):
I'm sorry, dear listeners. I apologize. We're
happy to have you here, butreally go listen to Common
Descent. Okay, I'm going to tellyou where to find them. Go
listen, join their discord. It'sa great community. And come to
Dragon Con and see them inperson.

David (01:00:13):
Absolutely you can find common descent wherever you get
your podcasts. We have adiscord. We're on some of the
social medias. We have awebsite,
commondescentpodcast.com, werelease episodes about various
topics in paleontology, and atvarious parts of the year, we
also do deep dives into scienceof movies, and we do speculative
evolution projects in Octoberfor Halloween. And we do all

(01:00:37):
sorts of fun evolutionpaleontology type stuff, yeah?

Brian (01:00:42):
Well, hopefully we have the opportunity to get together
again. I mean, this is the Dino,the paleontology game, so I we
may have to stretch at somepoint to make that happen, but

David (01:00:52):
we got that nature ecologies, yeah? Game sent to
us, and I went through, and Ilike, looked through all the
cards, and I, like, played alittle, you know, around with
myself, and it's pretty cool,actually, that might be fun to
play.

Brian (01:01:06):
I'm not kidding. I'll get in the car. I'll be there.
Absolutely, come on, absolutely.Well, I think we're just gonna
have to call it there. So thanksso much Will, David for taking
the time. And now we always cometo the part that happens every
time, where I never know how toend the episode. So I'm gonna
let Jason do it.

Jason (01:01:21):
Well thank you Will and David for being here. Thank you
everyone for listening, and havea great month and happy gaming.

Brian (01:01:26):
Have fun playing dice with the universe. See ya. This
has been the gaming with SciencePodcast copyright 2025 listeners
are free to reuse this recordingfor any non commercial purpose,
as long as credit is given togaming with science. This
podcast is produced with supportfrom the University of Georgia.
All opinions are those of thehosts, and do not imply
endorsement by the sponsors. Ifyou wish to purchase any of the
games that we've talked about,we encourage you to do so

(01:01:48):
through your friendly local gamestore. Thank you and have fun
playing dice with the universe.

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S2E01 - Holotype (Paleontology)

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