The snout which Bowerbank made the holotype specimen (on which the scientific name is based) of P. cuvieri consists of the front of the upper jaw, including part of a premaxillary crest (a crest on the premaxilla, the frontmost bone of the upper jaw), and is catalogued today as NHMUK PV 39409 at the Natural History Museum in London. It was originally reported to preserve a single tooth in the first right tooth socket (at the front of the snout), but this had disappeared when the holotype was examined in the 2000s. Two complete teeth were also originally reported to be preserved in the same block of chalk as the snout. Bowerbank also believed some large bones in three other collections may either have belonged to the same species, to P. giganteus, or to a third possible species. The British biologist Richard Owen assigned one long bone to P. cuvieri in 1851 (today catalogued as NHMUK PV 41637) based on its size and the character of its surface, and identified it as a possible phalanx bone of the elongated wing-finger.
