Edward Blyth first identified the northern cassowary from a specimen from an aviary located in Calcutta, India, in 1860.

[6][7] The northern cassowary has a hard and stiff black plumage, blue facial skin and a casque on top of the head.

The male, at 30 to 37 kg (66 to 82 lb), is smaller than the female, at an average of 58 kg (128 lb), making it the fourth heaviest living bird species after the common ostrich, Somali ostrich and the southern cassowary.

[citation needed] An alternate classification was proposed in 2014 by Mitchell et al., based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA.

The northern cassowary is endemic to the coastal swamps and lowland rainforests of the islands of New Guinea (north of the Central Cordillera and some areas west of the Cendrawasih Bay, as far as Raja Ampat Regency), Yapen,[8] Batanta and Salawati, in the countries of Indonesia and the Papua New Guinea.

The young have been observed to eat the feces of the males raising them and clutch mates.

Although subject to ongoing habitat loss and overhunting in some areas, as of 2017, the northern cassowary is evaluated as Least concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, as population size estimates suggest that populations are actually larger than previously estimated.