Casuarius

Cassowaries are flightless birds of the genus Casuarius, in the order Casuariiformes. They are classified as ratites, flightless birds without a keel on their sternum bones. Cassowaries are native to the tropical forests of New Guinea, the Moluccas, and northeastern Australia.

Casuarius

PaleoNeolitic (montage creator) BS Thurner Hof Kora27 Martin Sordilla · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
cassowaryPBDB
Sits inside
CasuariinaePBDB
Diet
herbivorePBDB
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB

Time the record covers

At most 1.1 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 3.6 Mya and 2.58 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Pliocene — about 1 of 1 occurrencePliocenePleistocene — about 0 of 1 occurrence3.6–3.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.6–3.5 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.5–3.4 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.4–3.4 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.4–3.3 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.3–3.2 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.2–3.2 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.2–3.1 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.1–3.0 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.0–3.0 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences3.0–2.9 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.9–2.8 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.8–2.8 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.8–2.7 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.7–2.6 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences2.6–2.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences4.1 Mya2.08 Mya

1 occurrence of Casuarius on record, most of them in the Pliocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

1 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

1 formation

Otibanda — 7.25°S, 146.50°E

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The named rock units Casuarius has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Casuarius and its relatives

Pliocene

Where Casuarius and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.

Found in the same rock

8 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Casuarius, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Casuarius

Credit
PaleoNeolitic (montage creator) BS Thurner Hof Kora27 Martin Sordilla
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Casuarius was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itCasuariinae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brisson 1760