> there were some pretty scary monster birds out there as the
> mammals were getting going. Seems reasonable that some primate
> or member of the genus Homo got it in the neck at some point
> from an avian dino-descendant.

I think the biggest-ever bird survived into the last millennium -
the Aepyornis of Madagascar, possibly the original of Sinbad's roc.

> If we clone dinos for chow, it'll be another case of "tastes
> like chicken."

The New Zealand moa was not much smaller than an Aepyornis. They
seem to have had even less brain than a chicken and were easy to
hunt by driving them into a swamp and finishing them off with a
stone axe. The usual Maori cooking technique was in an umu (earth
oven), with chunks of meat in flax baskets along with root vegetables.
Everything I've had cooked that way has tasted mainly of earth, but
I suspect a regularly-used umu would dry out and eventually impart
less of that flavour to the food.

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