Aquatic animals include for example the seabirds, such as gulls (family Laridae), pelicans (family Pelecanidae), and albatrosses (family Diomedeidae), and most of the Anseriformes (ducks, swans and geese).
It was briefly described and figured by Georges Cuvier in 1822 from Late Eocene material from Montmartre, France, though not formally described and named until 1852 by German botanist and ornithologist Ludwig Reichenbach as an early pelecanid.