[3] After a suggestion by Storrs L. Olson, a review of the type specimen and the referral of several other fossils by Houde and Haubold (1987) concluded that Palaeotis is a palaeognath and assigned it to the same order as ostriches; the Struthioniformes.

Houde and Haubold found three additional specimens in the collection of the Geiseltalmuseum, Martin-Luther University, Halle/S., Germany.

Houde and Haubold also requested permission to prepare a fossil cataloged as HLMD Me 7530 at the Hesseches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, Germany.

Various other ratite remains also occur in the European Paleogene and early Miocene, and these may represent various independent lineages, leading to further confusion.

While the forelimb is incomplete, the spindley humerus indicates that it had relatively large wings unlike modern ostriches and rheas.