Where are their Bones?

[busker]

“Lost even to forgettin”
“Extinct within man’s dominance”
“Worked to nitre by the Tiger”

Nicely evocative
Enjoyed the read.

Also makes me wonder if the Justinian plague was caused by a taste for exotics beasts...

Thanks!  Glad it's working. As to plague...

The Roman writer was Pliny the Elder, who died during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.  The Plague of Justinian first reached the Roman Empire in AD 541, apparently from points east.  But feasting on exotics might have had something to do with it, though as I recall, Plague is native to small plains rodents.  Fried shrew?

I noticed some howlers in my reply...one of the hazards of typing on a mobile screen, no matter how large.
My bad - the Justinian plague was indeed caused by Yersina Pestis. At least, that's the consensus until testing some newly discovered corpses in Istanbul prove that it was some cocktail of COVID and the bubonic plague. I'm sure that would make some academic's career.
It is some of the other great plagues whose causes are not completely well understood. These include the Athenian plague and the Antonine plague. 
The Athenian plague may have been an outbreak of Ebola, although that couldn't have been caused by beasts out of Africa. 

The moral of the story is, eat vegetables. Drive an electric car. And install solar panels on your roof.