Specimen P 28814 King Island Emu, Dromaius novaehollandiae ater (Vieillot, 1817)

Summary

The King Island Emu was a dwarf emu subspecies found only on King Island, in the Bass Strait. Their small size likely evolved as an adaptation to reduced availability of resources when King Island was cut off from populations on Tasmania and the mainland by sea level rise during the Late Quaternary. European colonists had hunted them to extinction by the early nineteenth century. Today they are known from fossils like these, and skeletons in European museums from a handful of individuals that were collected live in 1804 and sent to France. Two of these live emus were kept captive in the menagerie of Empress Josephine, and were likely the endlings of their kind, before their deaths in 1822.