It was described from fossil material collected in 2007 from the Saint Bathans fauna of the Bannockburn Formation in Otago, South Island.

It was a contemporary of the much smaller Saint Bathans bittern, remains of which have been found in the same sediments.

[1] The genus name matuku is a Māori-language word meaning “heron” or "bittern".

The specific epithet is a latinisation of the name of the Otago region where the descriptive material was collected.

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