It is a mostly black bird with a white tip to its tail, a red bill and a distinctive grey casque on its forehead.

It is a large terrestrial black curassow with a small head, large bluish grey casque on forehead, red bill, white-tipped tail feathers, greenish glossed mantle and breast feathers, and white below.

One of the largest birds in its habitat, the helmeted curassow is distributed in the eastern Andes of Venezuela and Colombia.

Formerly classified as a Vulnerable species by the IUCN,[4] recent research shows that its numbers are decreasing more and more rapidly.

This species' present-day distribution suggests that it became isolated some 6 million years ago as its mountain range uplifted.