 After examining the holotype, Simpson concluded there were no distinguishable details that defined the bone as from a penguin, but did not have any opinion as to what bird group it may have belonged to.The fossil was again restudied in 1964 by Pierce Brodkorb, who asserted the fossil to not be a tarsometatarsus but rather the end of a scapula.In his "Catalogue of Fossil Birds" Brodkorb placed the genus into the diurnal bird of prey family Accipitridae.