Its scrappy remains were found in the Lance Formation at Buck Creek, USA, and additional possible remains were found in the upper Hell Creek Formation of Montana, dated to the Danian age of the Paleogene period, though these may have been reworked.

[2] This was almost certainly a member of the Hesperornithes, the hefty and toothed flightless diving birds of the Mesozoic seas.

Its precise relationships are not all too clear; the quadrate bone is unique in some respects but apparently shares more apomorphies with the family Hesperornithidae - the "typical" Hesperornithes - in cladistic analysis.

Though it was heavily built like many (flying and flightless) diving birds, it weighed perhaps 1.5 or 2 kg.

This raises the possibility that the Hesperornithes not only included flying members (see also Enaliornis), but that their families might have evolved flightlessness independently.