More recent finds of subfossil material and subsequent studies on King and Kangaroo Island emu confirm their separate geographic origin and distinct morphology.

[4] In his 1907 book Extinct Birds, Walter Rothschild claimed Vieillot's description actually referred to the mainland emu, and that the name D. ater was therefore preoccupied.

Believing the skin in Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle of Paris was from Kangaroo Island, he made it the type specimen of his new species Dromaius peroni, named after the French naturalist François Péron, who is the main source of information about the bird in life.

More recent finds of sub-fossil material and subsequent studies on the King and Kangaroo Island emus, notably by Shane A. Parker in 1984, confirmed their separate geographic origin and distinct morphology.

The family-group shown is improbable, since breeding pairs of the mainland emu split up once the male begins incubating the eggs.

Lesueur's preparatory sketches also indicate these may have been drawn after the captive birds in Jardin des Plantes, and not wild ones, which would have been harder to observe for extended periods.

A crooked claw on the "male" has also been interpreted as evidence that it had lived in captivity, and it may also indicate that the depicted specimen is identical to the Kangaroo Island emu skeleton in Paris, which has a deformed toe.

The juvenile on the right may have been based on the Paris skin of an approximately five-month-old King Island emu specimen, which may, in turn, be the individual that died on board le Geographe during rough weather, and was presumably stuffed there by Lesueur himself.