The genus was erected in 1886 based on remains found on Lord Howe Island, which Richard Owen assigned to the two species "M. platyceps" and "M. minor" (now a synonym of the former). These were the first good meiolaniid remains, and were used to show that the first known remains of a related animal, a species from Queensland now known as "Ninjemys oweni" (which was assigned to "Meiolania" until 1992), did not belong to lizards as initially thought, but to turtles. Woodward sank "Niolamia argentina" into "Meiolania", but this was not accepted by later authors.