UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Before humans opted for comparatively more benign chickens, there was a time when they may have tried domesticating the razor-clawed, roundhouse-kicking cassowary, according to research conducted by Joyce L. and Douglas S. Sherwin Early Career Professor Kristina Douglass and her colleagues.

The research, originally published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has been picked up by multiple media outlets, including:

• New York Times: The world’s deadliest bird was raised by people 18,000 years ago
• Smithsonian Magazine: Thousands of years before humans raised chickens, they tried to domesticate the world’s deadliest bird
• CNN: World’s most dangerous bird raised by humans 18,000 years ago, study suggests
• New York Post: Humans once raised dinosaur-like bird, ate half-born young: study
• Penn State News: Late Pleistocene humans may have hatched and raised cassowary chicks
• CBC Radio: Humans raised deadly cassowary birds 18,000 years ago, researcher suggests
• LiveScience.com: These giant birds could eviscerate you. People were raising them 18,000 years ago. 
• WATTPoultry.com: ‘I am a cassowary farmer’ just doesn’t sound right
• Courthouse News Service: Humans domesticated dangerous cassowary bird thousands of years before chickens, study finds