Here we are, at the end of our series on human origins, but recent events and trends have already given our species a lot to think about, from biodiversity loss to climate change to social injustices. In our epilogue, we ponder these issues and what the future holds. Congratulations to @killdeercheer for completing this amazing series!

Oh, right. I was only thinking of abelisaurids, but if the other anon meant abelisauroids in general then yes, that’s a potential candidate.

I don’t know of any studies that have tried to estimate their field of binocular vision. From eyeballing (hah) their skulls, it doesn’t look like they had as wide of a binocular field as (for example) tyrannosaurids, but I wouldn’t be comfortable extrapolating beyond that.

Dececchi et al. (2020) did suggest that tyrannosaurids could travel more efficiently than other large theropods. However, what may be more informative about actual hunting strategies is comparing those theropods to their potential prey. Persons and Currie (2015) (in the book Hadrosaurs) hypothesized that hadrosaurids had greater endurance than tyrannosaurids despite slower running speeds, based on the position of the attachment point of the caudofemoralis muscle to the thigh. As for abelisaurids, the positioning of their caudofemoralis muscle looks more similar to that of tyrannosaurids than to that of hadrosaurids, so I’d guess that they probably did not have exceptional endurance either.

In general, large carnivorous theropods (even those that weren’t especially cursorial) appear to have been faster runners than large herbivorous dinosaurs, so in most cases I’d expect that speed was more important to them than endurance when it came to prey capture.

Uh… I’ll put it this way: I don’t think it’s much more likely than birds not being theropods. Mickey Mortimer has already addressed this in more detail.

New episode of Through Time and Clades! In this month’s news episode, we discuss a new extinct armored fish, 100-year-old coelacanths, how giant animals move, and the unfortunate extinctions among native Australian rodents.

Not that we know of.

Aye-aye.

It might be interesting to speculate, but unless we get a clearer consensus on the phylogenetic position of scansoriopterygids or find evidence of their immediate ancestors, I don’t think we’re likely to know.

No. Being objective synonyms at the genus level means that both genera were originally named for the same type species or that the type species of both genera were based on the exact same type specimen, neither of which is true in this case. However, Jeholornis and Shenzhouraptor might be subjective synonyms (different names based on different specimens, but referring to the same taxon).