Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Therizinosaurus O'Brien

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

Conan talks to Jimmy from Orlando about paleontological history and Conan’s personal favorite dinosaur.  Wanna get a chance to talk to Conan? Submit here: TeamCoco.com/CallConan

Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Conan? Visit teamcoco.com slash call Conan. Okay. Let's get started. Hi, Jimmy, meet Conan and David. Hello, Conan and David. It's a pleasure to meet you guys.

How are you doing? Hi. We're great. Jimmy, very nice to meet you. I know nothing about you, but I'm looking at you right now. You are wearing a very festive shirt. Then behind you in the background, I see shells with lots of dinosaur models. Is that a clue as to who you are and what you do?

No, that has absolutely nothing to do with me or my personality at all. This is a model home and it came with the house. No, I'm a huge fan of dinosaurs. I love them. Yeah. So you're into dinosaurs and dinosaur models, I can see. And okay, Jimmy, where are you right now? I'm in Orlando, Florida, and I'm about to actually about two miles away from the actual

Jurassic Park at University. Is that why you chose to live in Orlando so that you could go to the Jurassic Park as often as possible? No, we consider that a perk. I moved to Orlando because I actually started working at a museum where I was the paleontologist on staff. Ah, you're a paleontologist. Yes, sir.

Okay. All right. I did not know that. You're a paleontologist and so you work with dinosaurs. That's your profession. That is my passion and that is, yes, that's what I like to do. That's nice. So a lot of kids go through a dinosaur phase and then it wears off.

Yours didn't. No. You were probably into dinosaurs as a kid and it just stuck. It was such a cycle. It kept coming back every few years where it's like this passion for dinosaurs just, it wouldn't leave. It was an intrusive thought of just massive theropods all the time and it was just a blast. And so it's something that so many kids grow out of that phase, like you said, and go on

to live productive adult lives and I just, I never lost the bug for these amazing animals that used to call this place home. And so I've kind of dedicated myself to learning all about how they lived, how they moved and what role they had on this planet because those are the roles that we're filling now. And dinosaurs, do you think they could come back? Could dinosaurs reappear on this earth once mankind is done fucking it up? Could dinosaurs come back in a billion years? You know, considering in many ways Conan, dinosaurs never left.

The big ones like T-Rex and Brachiosaurus and the ones that people think of when they come to mind, yeah, those are dead and gone and evolution doesn't really do repeats. But we do have the modern descendants of dinosaurs, which are the birds. And one of the scariest dinosaurs that ever lived is the Southern Cassowary, which lives in New Guinea. This is a massive bird, it's got a huge crest on its head. It's got a six inch claw and it actively hunts humans. It's the only dinosaur with a different kill count.

Wait, and they still exist today? Oh yeah, you can see them in zoos and they are just... The Southern Cassowary? It looks like a, well, I'll give you a quick glimpse here. So this is a dinosaur called an Edmontosaurus, which is in no way related to these things. But it's got this big crest on the top of its head. Wait, that looks exactly like my hair. That's...

It really does. It really does. I mean, it's yellow, but that looks exactly like my hair. I may be a dinosaur of some kind. Yeah. Look at that. Look at that thing. Oh my God, that thing looks exactly...

It's got the same... It's using gel. It's you. That dinosaur, yes, and it attacks viciously. It is a monster. I'm always on the hunt. It is you. It's got a red scrotum hanging from its neck.

You've got... That's not a scrotum. That's a red tie for a talk show host. That's incredible that... Look this up, folks. The Southern Cassowary, C-A-S-S-O-W-A-R-Y, and you'll... It's like me looking in a mirror this thing. It's chilling to the bone.

Yeah. That particular animal, we've had such a grand idea of how dinosaurs moved and what their feet looked like. The feet of a cassowary, like from its skeletal anatomy to the muscles to the skin, that is exactly what we think dinosaurs back in the day looked like, and they are monsters. They're fantastic animals. Now, it must be your dream to discover a new type of dinosaur, to find dinosaur bones somewhere that haven't been found and discover a new type of creature.

Is that true? It was my dream to one day be a guest on a fantastic talk show with a host that I don't know. So now I have to move something else up. Well, you lose because this is a podcast, so I hate to break it to you, but your dreams have not banned out. You see, the talk show format, I think, like the dinosaur, has gone extinct, probably due to a meteor or just too many of them, so you'd love to find one.

It would be an absolute dream to be on a dig. I've been on a number of digs already where I've been able to go out and explore and see these things that no one has ever seen before, and so many times, people will find them and name them for something really cool. So we've got dinosaurs like Thanatothoristis, which means the reaper of death and the harvinder of doom. We've got new things like Leuculcan, which means the one who causes great fear. That's not just another Culcan kid.

There is a Culcan who is called Leuculcan. He's the fourth youngest, and he's apparently an incredible asshole who's always charging up a big barbill and then just taking off. And he looks kind of like this, too. He's got the swagger and the big horns on top of his head, absolutely. But you find these things now, and it's a competition to make the craziest name. So I feel like if I were in a position where I discovered a new one, I've got a name lined up ready to go.

But wait, so you have a name even though you don't know what it is you'll find. You might find it could be a fish, it could be a bird, it could be a giant T-Rex. So no matter what you find, this is going to be the name? I'm going to try for it. It's going to be on the working title. Let's hear the name for when Jimmy finds his dinosaur. The name will be Hexamortis antiterra. Oh.

Okay. You just, I think, cast a spell over all three of us. Haven't I? And that name. What is it? What does that mean? That name means kills you six times before you hit the ground. Oh my god.

That's fantastic. I hope you find it's a kind of butterfly. It was completely harmless. A little vegetarian lizard. I hope you find the bones of just a sweet little lizard that it was at the very bottom of the food chain and had one leg and no teeth. It's either going to be that or gerbilsaurus, it'll be that much of a cuddly little thing. So is it competitive?

Do you have other paleontologists out there that you consider your sworn enemies because when you head to a great dig site, you know that Stavros is going to be there and you hate Stavros. I'm just making up that name, but I'm pretty certain your enemy is named Stavros. He knows what he did. Yeah, he knows what he did. So is that, is there anyone that you, do you guys must have pointy elbows, if you know what I mean, sometimes when you're at a dig site and someone looks like they're getting

something good or maybe it's a good dig site, you get there first, they get there at the same time? Damn it. So. Is there anyone like that? Yeah. Decades ago, that was the case. It was such a huge competitive thing because dinosaurs were such a huge new thing, like

this is from a time when the concept of extinction wasn't really well understood, like animals that lived have just always lived. How could something have been created and then disappear? And so when we started finding these things, the race was to get as many bones out of the ground as you can. And it became very exclusive. We had a lot of things that got smuggled into other countries and it just created a whole nasty thing.

There is a very small faction of that these days. Honestly, paleontology is a science that is evolving in its own because I'm very happy to see that we have so many amazing young women and paleontologists of color who are getting into the field and there's such a strong inclusive push to try and make this because science is for everybody and dinosaurs are for everyone. And so I'm very glad that outside of Stavros who can go piss up a rope, everyone else is fine. You're a very inspiring fellow, Jimmy.

I'm impressed. Matt, what do you think? Yeah. I like anybody you can inspire and end it with piss up a rope. You started it out really nicely and ended with piss up a rope. Absolutely. What's your favorite all time dinosaur? Go.

I got to go with Tyrannosaurus rex. Right? But why were his arms so small? He looks ridiculous. Because he didn't need them anymore. T-rex comes from the end of a long line of these what we call theropods, the big three toed clawed carnivores. And its earlier ancestors had the longer arms and they were much more agile.

But what they found out in the millions of years that these things lived, the way evolution works, it's really just changing and adapting to how life needs things to change. So animals that would take a bite out of a running prey instead of taking it down got fuller faster and it gave them time to go off and do other things like make baby dinosaurs. And so over time. Yeah. Would you leave your saucy little remarks out of this erudite conversation? I'll save them for the next time I'm talking to you.

That sounds good. Yeah. Make baby dinosaurs. That's what I mean. So wait. So you're saying that T-rex had ancestors with much longer arms. He couldn't wear hand-me-downs. Right?

Because they wear sleeves. He's rolled up the sleeves. Yeah, he's rolled up the sleeves. Come on guys. This is good stuff. Anybody? Hello? Jimmy, if they were left to evolve, would they have, would their arms have just disappeared

eventually? Well, actually we've seen other similar dinosaurs that filled that same ecological role who didn't have even as big of arms as Tyrannosaurus did, much smaller ones. But because dinosaurs are birds, and birds are dinosaurs, if they continue to evolve, the arms would disappear and become wings. But T-rex, as it continued to grow and from its ancient lineage, it built better tools for the job. So this is actually the tooth of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Oh my god. Look at that. Wait, a real one or a replica? No, this is a, it's a replica, but it's an exact copy of a real one that one day will be mine. When guests come over, you tell them it's real, don't you? No. When you're in a bar and you whip that out suddenly.

It's with you at all times. It's real. I like the thought of you carrying it with you everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Classic fight, Tyrannosaurus rex versus Brontosaurus. Who wins?

Ooh. Okay. So in, it depends on the circumstances. So the Brontosaurus has a gun. Okay. Brontosaurus will probably edge out in this one because long range weapons might really help. But Brontosaurus was actually such a massive creature that they could actually use their

tails like whips and they were so mighty that things didn't go after them one-on-one. They kind of moved around as they wanted to. They went where they wanted to. They were walking tanks. And so a T-rex would not necessarily go after Brontosaurus, but it might go after a couple of little baby ones. So if they put them in an octagon and they had to go at it, the T-rex would go that way. Oh, I assume, but sir, I assume this was in an octagon, that would never end out.

The T-rex would ultimately, I think, in the combat scenario come out on top. Because of his big jumpers. Because of his big jumpers. The scenario that is sketched out in Jurassic Park, where they take DNA and they replicate it and they bring them back to life and it's a theme park. Is that something that's like 20 years away, 15 years away? When are we going to see these giant dinosaurs roaming in a park that quickly loses control of the dinosaurs?

Oh my God. And Jeff Goldblum is injured. When is that going to happen? I cannot wait for that day to happen. Right now, we don't have the technology to make something like that happen. And the real tricky part about it is because DNA has an expiration date. So even if you got the DNA out of the cells, which in many cases we've done, we've actually found in the leg bones of a Tyrannosaurus, we found soft tissues, we found preserved blood,

we found collagen and things like that, so we have some of the soft tissue. But the DNA that actually makes it up breaks down over times like faded newspapers that get exposed and they just become brittle. So our technology 10 years ago, keeping with the newspaper analogy, we could make out paragraphs of what a thing was. Now we've gotten to the point where we can start to read words and figure out certain letters. Once we can put the syntax together, then we've got a different story.

But right now, what's happening is there are some scientists who are actively trying to turn on the dinosaur genes in modern day birds and kind of regress them to their ancestral forms. Haven't they watched Jurassic Park? Why are people meddling with this stuff? It's not going to go well. Because they're messes. It's not, you're meddling in things.

You're mad, Jimmy, mad. You and your friends, you've got to stop them. This is insanity. Yeah. You're messing with powers you can't possibly understand. You can't possibly understand what you're unleashing here. And so I encourage you and your friends, go watch the first Jurassic Park. If that doesn't convince you, watch the second one.

If that still doesn't convince you, watch the third and the fourth and the fifth one. You can skip those. Was there one Jurassic Park? How many have there been? They're coming up on number six. Is that true? Yeah. There'll be Jurassic World Dominion.

It'll be the sixth one coming out. And I'm really looking forward to this. It's going to be great. I'm trying to reopen the park and say, I swear to God, this time it's okay. It's the exact same plot every time. Every time it's like, you know, there were some issues. What travel agent would say, look, I know that this thing has completely failed and that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed.

But I think this time, A, the food's better. B, there's a mis-freeb complementary massage when you show up. You can see they're 60% sure the dinosaurs can't get loose. Absolutely. You'd go? If Jurassic Park were real, I wouldn't visit. I would work there. I would leave my job behind.

I would leave this whole world and I would be part of the veterinary or the education department. If that was the real situation, I would love it. No, Jimmy, you're wearing that shirt like you're a supporting character. I know. Costy-wise. You're dead for sure. Yeah.

You're one of the first people to go in the movie. That's the problem. You're the guy that says, ah, this doesn't look right. Those bars look separated. I'm going in there to investigate. That's what happens to you and then chomp. Oh, geez, I thought it was the plucky comic relief. Okay.

You are that too. But I think you're the, I, unfortunately, I don't know. Well, then I died the way I lived. Surrounded by the teeth of Tyrannosaurus. Yeah. I died the way I lived. Giggling. Do you love dinosaurs so much that you'd be, you'd actually enjoy being killed by a dinosaur?

Do you know what I mean? Like if you had to go, do you wish it would be via dinosaur? I don't think, killed, no, maimed, I'd have a story to tell. But that's true. You know what's interesting? You've thought about this. You've actually given it some thought. Yeah.

So you don't want to be killed by a dinosaur. No. But if one took a piece of your leg, you could live off that the rest of your life. Oh yeah. I'd go as far as to say you fantasized about this. Oh no, we're not going that far. There's no pause. We're going to dial that back a little bit.

Yeah. You had the answer ready right away. Killed, no, maimed, I'd have a story to tell. Wow. You have a question for me, sir? I do actually. I was going to ask. So Conan, this is a question I ask of everybody I talk to and I am dying to know the answer

from you. Conan O'Brien. Is this, are you going to, what if your question is can I have some money? No, God no. Yeah. This is a question I ask everybody, could I have $300 a day in my life? I just do a volume business of asking people for money. My question to you is Conan O'Brien, what is your favorite dinosaur?

Oh, wow, well, you know, I hate to, I used to be the T-Rex until you said T-Rex and now I think I have to go with Diplodocus because it's the only other name I can remember. That's a good name. That's a great dinosaur. Which one is Diplodocus? It is one of the longest of the sauropods, so you mentioned the sauropods before. I liked it because I'm very long and the Diplodocus is very long and it lives in the water, doesn't it?

No, no, no. Actually, they lived across the plains in Savannah, so they were actually, they walked around in huge force and they could whip their tails so fast it could like sound like thunder as they walked around. But Diplodocus, it was a massive animal. I'm sorry, excuse me sir, Diplodocus. Actually they're both right. It's crazy.

Damn it! I wanted to be an ass and correct you. You say Diplodocus? It's a tomato-tomato situation. Diplodocus or Diplodocus, it comes from the Greek and that jerk Stavros. It's from, it means double beam. It's based on the way that the bones of the tail look and they call it the Diplodocus or Plodocus, whichever way you want to do it.

And they say both interchangeably, so it's all good. Well now I say Diplodocus. Really? I just want to be different. Well that's my pick. That's my pick for favorite dinosaur. That's an excellent choice. When I showed this duck bill before, you said this dinosaur kind of looked like you.

Well just that hair, yeah. I feel like I got a better one. I think I have something else that kind of fits the cone and bill a little bit more. This is a dinosaur called Therazinosaurus. Oh wow. It's very tall. It's got this really, it's really great proportions. It's got the long arms, it's got the shimmering orange hair down the side.

And then what I like about this one is that it can also do the string dance. Oh look at that. And then when the dance is over, it's got its own scissors built in, it could just cut the string. Okay, you know what's clear to me now? You are in no way a scientist. You are a prop comic. You're a prop comic.

You're the Gallagher of paleontology. Yeah, you're Gallagher 3. Your house is just filled with toys and kooky sight gags. Conan, if they make sounds, they're toys. If they don't, they're models. How long have you lived alone? I'm just curious. No, actually, you know, I've been married for nine years now and she does.

Fantastic. She puts up with all of it and she loves it. It's important that you too do not go extinct. Indeed. You know, I'm going to say, no, I am a fan of yours. I love people that know stuff. I really do. I love people that have educated themselves and know things.

And also, you're very upbeat about what you do, which is really infectious and I think it's very cool. I think it's very cool. And I say, go out and get more dinosaur replicas. I didn't want to say toys. He said get more. You tell him no. We just hear a door slam.

Car starts. Car, room, you're in and I think not enough dinosaurs. Well, Jimmy, it was a pleasure meeting you seriously and best of luck to you and I hope our paths cross someday and I hope you find your dinosaur. I really do. Conan, it's been an honor. Thank you so much for having me on. It's been an absolute pleasure.

I'll see you around next time. Thanks, Jimmy. And Jimmy, by the way, you've got a great Jack Black energy. You really do. I've known Jack for a long time, but you've got that same kind of, and that's a compliment. I try to keep it loosey-goosey cones. I knew it. I knew it.

Jack, take off that mask. Jimmy, thank you so much. Really nice talking to you. Pleasure to talk to you. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Conan O'Brien needs a fan with Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian and Matt Gorely.

Produced by me, Matt Gorely. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Joanna Soloteroff and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Colin Anderson at Earwolf, music by Jimmy Vavino, supervising producer Aaron Blair, associate talent producer Jennifer Samples, associate producers Sean Doherty and Lisa Berm, engineered by Will Beckton. Please rate, review, and subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. This has been a Team Coco production, in association with Stitcher.