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 42 megafaunal bird DHJanzen100704.jpg high resolution
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| The one large vertebrate that escaped the aboriginal hunters of 50,000 years ago is the cassowary. The dung pile in DHJanzen100703.jpg above belongs to a wild cassowary, a flightless bird not unlike a small ostrich, but a denizen of deep rainforest rather than the open plains (that honor is held by the emu, another flightless bird that also disperses large tree seeds in Australia, but in more open habitats and tropical dry forest). This individual watching me warily is a semi-tame adult that grew up accepting food handouts from the back door of a nature lover living on the edge of Queensland rainforest. Had the cassowary gone the way of the other extinct Australian megafauna, their brightly colored fruits would be now on the list of Australian anachronisms. | ||
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