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What would it take to have edible non-therapod dinosaur meat in a world where humans and dinosaurs have coexist since human civilization? Or would the human body or creativity find a way to eat dinosaur meat? It's my understanding that lots of dinosaur meat would be deadly due to build up of heavy metals from their diet. Edit: I'm looking at the implications of dinosaur ranching and if Dinosaur meat is edible, then it can be sold. You don't have to like it to eat it. Also if it isn't consumable for humans, then the market is smaller and resevered as feed for carnivous dinosaurs.

Sage Grant
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    Archosaurians are some of the most popular sources of meat in the world, and are have a very wide variety of preparation and cooking techniques. Where are you expecting the heavy metals to come from, by the way? Pollutants like that get concentrated at the top of food chains, but they're much less of a problem if you eat herbivorous species. – Starfish Prime Mar 19 '24 at 11:21
  • Tbh I couldn't remember which dinosaur the article was talking able, could have been t rex. – Sage Grant Mar 19 '24 at 11:40
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    Yeah, eating apex predators who live in an industrialized world is probably not too healthy, but you don't get to be an apex predator without a large ecosystem of tasty things underneath you. Those t-rexes would be large, dangerous competitors for humans, and as such they'd have probably gone the way of most other awkward and potentially edible megafauna in earth's recent history: into the cooking pot, and thence into extinction, some time before sufficient industrialization occurred to pollute their food sources. – Starfish Prime Mar 19 '24 at 11:49
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    "due to build up of heavy metals from their diet" -- Why would you think that??? The only reason WE on earth have a problem with predator meat in the oceans(!) is that we dumped so much of our industrial garbage there for centuries, and, more importantly, all the coal that we burned, releasing a huge amount of heavy metals into the atmosphere, most of it ending up in the oceans. Otherwise we would not have that problem. – Mörre Mar 19 '24 at 14:57
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    the heavy metal thing is about ONE region in north America where glaciation removed much of the heavy metals, dinosaur meat would have the same metal content of other wild game. – John Mar 19 '24 at 19:53
  • why does this not answer your question, https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/227031/what-can-we-eat-in-the-late-cretaceous – John Mar 19 '24 at 19:55
  • @John, I thought it was all of North America, and that's where my story takes place. – Sage Grant Mar 20 '24 at 12:20
  • @SageGrant not from any study I have ever heard of. – John Mar 20 '24 at 20:41
  • For roughly how many centuries did dinosaurs and humans co-exist? Then, why would real dietary restrictions apply in your own built world, even if those caveats were not so obscure, almost no-one had ever heard of them? – Robbie Goodwin Mar 24 '24 at 22:56

2 Answers2

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Why was dinosaur meat toxic to modern humans?

The claim that dinosaur meat would be toxic has to do with Cretaceous soil conditions. As the claim goes, at the time, there should have been higher concentrations of heavy metals in topsoil which worked thier way up the food chain. If this is true, and you were to go back in time, then yes, most food would slowly kill you from heavy metal poisoning, not just the dinosaurs.

However, if in your setting, dinosaurs just never went extinct, then by today's time period, they should be no more toxic than other terrestrial megafauna. So large herbivorous dinos should be safe to eat like elephants or mooses, but large predators may be a bit toxic like eating tigers, but you'd have to eat a lot of it over a long time period to notice the effects.

Managing a Heavy Metal Rich Diet

Just in case that does not answer your question, I will also answer it under the assumption that in your setting, dinosaurs simply DO have elevated heavy metal in thier meat.

DISCLAIMER: THIS POST IS FOR WORLD BUILDING PURPOSES ONLY, IF YOU ARE SUFFERING FROM HEAVY METAL TOXICITY OR YOU FEEL TEMPTED TO CONSUME LARGE AMOUNTS OF HEAVY METAL RICH MEAT, PLEASE SEEK THE MEDICAL ADVICE OF A LICENSED PROFESSIONAL.

As we were all told when we were little, once you get a heavy metal in your system, it's yours forever... except that this is not 100% true. It's just that the common Westernized diet is so full of highly processed and fatty foods that it makes us really bad at handling heavy metals. Although our bodies can not naturally purge heavy metals very well, there are foods that we can consume that contain compounds that bind to heavy metals protecting us from thier harmful effects, helping us heal form the damage they cause, and allowing us to flush them from our system.

If your people were to eat a diet rich in minimally processed versions of these foods, then they would be naturally protected from the levels of heavy metal buildup that you would expect the dinosaur meat to contain. Below are the most likely types of toxic metals you could get from eating too much dino meat and common foods that would help keep your people alive and healthy if also consumed as staples of their diet.

  • Lead: Tomatoes, Tea, Ginger, Garlic, Cilantro, Milk Thistle Seeds
  • Cadmium: Onion, Curry, Grape, Cilantro, Milk Thistle Seeds
  • Mercury: Tea, Rhubarb, Grape Seed, Cilantro, Milk Thistle Seeds
  • Nickel: Carrots, Potatoes, Onions, Milk Thistle Seeds
  • Zinc*: Corn, Rice, and other Cereals.
  • Iron*: Mustard Greens (including Spinach, kale, etc.), Rhubarb, Strawberries, Beets, and Edamame beans
  • Arsenic**: Mustard Greens (including Spinach, kale, etc.), Milk Thistle Seeds
  • Aluminum**: Turmeric, cilantro, parsley, curry, garlic, Milk Thistle seeds

* While too much zinc or iron can be toxic, they are also important parts of your biology. These foods can reduce the harmful effects of too much of these heavy metals, but you don't want to avoid these metals entirely either.

** Technically transitional metals, not a heavy metal, but similarly toxic

Milk Thistle Seeds are generally considered the best universal heavy metal detox supplement and can be drank as a tea, or consumed like a grain, but there are a wide range of diets that could easily add up to the same effect as long as they are rich in a wide range of herbs, fruits, and vegetables.

https://www.agqlabs.us.com/heavy-metals-in-foods/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4303853/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6853017/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3654245/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9588316/

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/hemochromatosis-diet#dietary-factors

https://blog.biostarus.com/foods-that-fight-metal-toxicity/

https://www.mdpi.com/2223-7747/11/15/2018

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/aluminum-toxicity-health-mahdavi-d-c-q-m-e-b-c-i-m-ahp-yogi

Nosajimiki
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    Do you have any useful papers showing that those foods are effective at removing heavy metals from humans in vivo? I see a lot of promotion from exceedingly dubious pseudoscientific sources (which often go hand in hand with the notion of "detoxing") but not so much actual research. There is evidence that the plants can protect themselves from metal toxicity, but that's a long way from doing the same job to things that eat them. – Starfish Prime Mar 19 '24 at 14:32
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    @StarfishPrime sorry, was not saving my links, but yes, most of this is coming from research papers that cited the exact active compounds and described thier mechanism of defense... but I thought that would be too much detail for WorldBuilding purposes. Some stuff did come from articles, but I only included the stuff that appeared reputable (like written by a doctor, containing citations, and giving some explanation of the mechanism of defense). The only one I did not dig very deep into is the Milk Thistle Seeds, only because I know I've researched it more heavily in past for other questions – Nosajimiki Mar 19 '24 at 14:50
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    @StarfishPrime I've added citations from browser history. There were a lot of dead end and less reputable searches to dig through that I did not use that I tried to exclude; so, it's possible the citations are not 100%, but this should be more than enough to establish the general thesis that eating certain foods helps purge and protect your body from toxic metals. – Nosajimiki Mar 19 '24 at 15:04
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    Lets not go as far as "purge" ;-) Some of those papers are interesting, but there's plenty of "works in rats!" and the occasional followup "...but no better than placebo in humans". Also, given the presence of stuff like tomatoes and potatoes and onions and garlic, it might be worth easing off the "western diet" there... – Starfish Prime Mar 19 '24 at 15:16
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    @StarfishPrime The Western Diet thing has more to do with fats, and foods that are processed in ways that destroy helpful chemicals in these food. Not sure which article it was in, but one mentioned that fats can help your body metabolize heavy metals increasing thier toxic effect. – Nosajimiki Mar 19 '24 at 15:19
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    As for the conclusiveness of the research, no, I'm not suggesting that eating these plants is a good substitute for proper medical treatment for acute heavy metal poisoning, but the effects are generally conclusive enough that a good diet of plants should offset heavy metal toxicity from a diet of no so good meat. Regardless, the question is not tagged hard-science; so, it should all more than pass the criteria of plausibility for World Building Purposes. – Nosajimiki Mar 19 '24 at 15:27
  • the heavy metal claim for cretaceous soils is entirely regional, places hit by glaciers would of course have fewer metals in the soil. for most places the metal content would not be noticeablely different. – John Mar 19 '24 at 19:48
  • @john When the Earth was younger, there would have been a higher average % of heavy metals in the soil since volcanoes recirculate a disproportionate amount of light elements and the frequency of meteor impacts has been going down since the Earth formed. I don't know how significantly different it would actually be, it's just the main reason I could find why some people make the claim that dinosaurs were high in heavy metals. – Nosajimiki Mar 19 '24 at 21:19
  • @Nosajimiki actually recent work in element cycling shows the opposite, volcanoes may actually bring more rare earth elements to the surface. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110810132903.htm and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169136819300988 – John Mar 19 '24 at 22:14
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    @john My comment is about heavy metals, not rare earth metals. So yes, low density stuff like manganese, chromium, and vanadium will make up disproportionately high percentages of lava, whereas heavy metals like lead and mercury are more prone to sink in the mantel, and represent disproportionately low percentages. As for your articles, they seem to be more about how magma patterns can cause like elements come together to make ores of densely concentrated elements. So yes, a volcano can make individual veins that are high in one thing vs another, but I am talking about global averages. – Nosajimiki Mar 20 '24 at 14:29
  • One thing that I think is worth taking into consideration is that all the plant groups mentioned are flowering plants, which hadn't evolved at the time of the dinosaurs - an in-universe explanation would be needed for why they are available. – j4nd3r53n Mar 20 '24 at 17:02
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    @j4nd3r53n But when people are around there are flowering plants so we should not read too much into the exact choice of era. It may be possible that the dinosaurs remain because temperature did not fall and similarly CO2 levels did not fall and there was enough tasty foliage for them to eat and have a happy cold-blooded co/existence with evolving mammals/humans.. – KalleMP Mar 20 '24 at 17:22
  • @Nosajimiki the rare earths mentioned was osmium, the densest metal. And the discovery was that mantle cycles bring the metal to the surface were it can form concentrations. – John Mar 20 '24 at 20:47
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    @KalleMP Well, only saying; it would be a shame not to have handled this in the story, eg. if people had invented time travel. – j4nd3r53n Mar 21 '24 at 08:57
  • @John Osmium is one of the rarest metals in the Earth's crust averaging between 100-200 parts per trillion, but the universal average of Osmium is 3000 parts per trillion. Its density means that it sinks in magma; so, when the crust melts, more of it sinks deeper than is re-ejected in lava. Your article talks about the formation of ores that contain Osmium. In things like pyrrhotite and pentlandite, it can be found at concentrations over 100 parts per million which are astonishingly high concentrations for such a rare element, but the crust average would have still been higher a long time ago – Nosajimiki Mar 21 '24 at 13:43
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We already eat dinosaur meat in large amounts, every time we eat chicken, turkey and other birds, as those birds are the more direct descendant of dinosaurs.

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In some places you can also enjoy crocodile or snake meat, if you want to step in distant relatives' realms.

So I think that if you stick eating bird's ancestors you should be in rather safe territory.

L.Dutch
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  • I'm aware we eat birds, I'm looking at the other side of the family, like hadrosaurs and triceratops. Would they be different from birds? – Sage Grant Mar 19 '24 at 11:41
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    @SageGrant are crocodiles and snakes not different enough? – Starfish Prime Mar 19 '24 at 11:46
  • @SageGrant if you want to get a taste of crocodile, check out a mongolian grill, you might be lucky and they offer it like cangoroo. – Trish Mar 19 '24 at 18:48
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    They say that sharks and Coelocanths are also from dinosaur times but probably not of the T.Rex family and Coelocanth is reputedly not very tasty. – KalleMP Mar 20 '24 at 17:24