dromaius

Regarding fossil species of Dromaius and Casuarius, see their genus pages.

The Emu, Dromaius novaehollandiae, is a large bird and one of the few birds that cannot fly.

Three different 'Dromaius' species were common in Australia before European settlement, and one species is known from fossils.

In his original 1816 description of the emu, Vieillot used two generic names; first Dromiceius, then Dromaius a few pages later.

Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot first coined the binomial Dromaius ater in 1817.

He also named the extinct Kangaroo Island Emu (Dromaius baudinianus) in 1984 on the basis of subfossil bones.

There were also two species of Dwarf Emu, Dromaius minor, one living on King Island in Tasmania and the other on Kangaroo Island.

In 1906, Walter Baldwin Spencer coined the name Dromaius minor based on some Pleistocene subfossil bones and eggshells found on King Island the same year, believing they were the first physical evidence of an emu from there.