Advice for Joining Cracked Thick Slab

I have a [28"x59", 9/4" thick Cherry slab](https://inventory.horizonwood.com/product/cherry-extra-wide-slabs-417904) that just arrived that I would like to make into a desk top. This is my first time doing "fine" woodworking as opposed to general carpentry and I'd appreciate some advice on how to handle a few things about this slab.

1) The slab is cracked cleanly down the middle into two pieces. This happened during milling at the vendor and was figured into the price. With a fully-separated slab like this is there a better technique than just epoxy and butterflies to rejoin the two halves? Epoxied metal dowel pins in oversized holes came to mind, but I don't see any examples online of other folks doing this and I'm wondering if there's a reason for that.

2) One of the two halves split during shipping, not quite completely, but enough that it probably needs to be dealt with before further work as I suspect it will come apart with further handling. Does it make sense to screw temporary braces onto the cracked side to stabilize it or to allow the piece to separate and then join them with the same technique I use to handle split #1

Thanks for your help!