Initially mistaken for a walking New World vulture, Neocathartes is now classified as a bathornithid, a family of cariamaeans. Neocathartes was a slender bird, around the size of a turkey vulture. Although it was capable of flight, it probably stayed on the ground most of the time, as evidenced by its long legs. Its lifestyle was most likely comparable to that of the modern-day secretary bird, or the seriema (to which the bathornithids were distantly related).[3]