@Francis,
Francis wrote:
I was interested in the Heath Hen (Tympanuchus cupido cupido) , now extinct, which was a subspecies of the Greater Prairie Chicken, because of this:
Quote:many have speculated that the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving dinner featured Heath Hens and not wild turkey.
Interesting. I didn't know these things ever existed in New Hampshire. So just like the American Chestnut, once a vital part of the local ecology/economy, vanished from cultural awareness across just a few generations.
So often we look back in time and think we know about dinosaurs and pleistocene megafauna, but the vast majority of history in all forms must be completely invisible to us. We live in our own slice of time with just a hazy view of what the world was like just a few hundred years before us.
