Chatterjee, who first described Protavis, has assigned the binomial Protoavis texensis (" first bird from Texas ") to the small cache of bones, allegedly conspecific.

The original describer of Protoavis texensis, Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University, interpreted the type specimen to have come from a single animal, specifically a 35 cm tall bird that lived in what is now Texas, USA, around 210 million years ago.

Protoavis has been reconstructed as a carnivorous bird that had teeth on the tip of its jaws and eyes located at the front of the skull, suggesting a nocturnal or crepuscular lifestyle.

However, this description of Protoavis assumes that Protoavis has been correctly interpreted as a bird.

Almost all palaeontologists doubt that Protoavis is a bird, or that all remains assigned to it even come from a single species, because of the circumstances of its discovery and unconvincing avian synapomorphies in its fragmentary material.

However, these characters are not robust enough to identify Protoavis as a bird.

These data suggest that in the braincase attributed to Protoavis is the earliest known record of a coelurosaurian theropod, as opposed to that of an ornithothoracine bird.

In even the most basal avialian, Archaeopteryx, there is no vestige of the fifth metacarpal and its presence in Protoavis ; seems incongruous with the claim that it is a bird, let alone one more derived than Archaeopteryx.

Protoavis has been reconstructed as a carnivorous bird that had teeth on the tip of its jaws and eyes located at the front of the skull, suggesting a nocturnal or crepuscular lifestyle.

However, this description of Protoavis assumes that Protoavis has been correctly interpreted as a bird.

Almost all palaeontologists doubt that Protoavis is a bird, or that all remains assigned to it even come from a single species, because of the circumstances of its discovery and unconvincing avian synapomorphies in its fragmentary material.

" has neither been widely accepted nor seriously considered as a Triassic bird ..., who has examined the material and is one of the few workers to have seriously considered Chatterjee ’ s proposal, argued that the avian status of P. texensis is probably not as clear as generally portrayed by Chatterjee, and further recommended minimization of the role that Protoavis plays in the discussion of avian ancestry.

Much controversy remains over the animal, and there are many different interpretations of what Protoavis actually is.

Protoavis is usually depicted as being a bipedal archosaur, similar to several poposaurids and rauisuchids that may have been partially or habitually bipedal and lived during roughly the same time as Protoavis.

The braincase of Protoavis is similar in some respects to Troodon, with an enlarged cerebellum that shifted the optic lobes ventrolaterally, and also has a large floccular lobe.

However, Protoavis is also remarkedly non-bird like in that it possess only a single exit for the trigeminal.

Chatterjee presents the skull of Protoavis as complete, although only the caudal aspect of the cranium is represented in the available fossils.

The braincase is where Protoavis comes close to being as avian as Chatterjee has maintained.

The claim that the full complement of tympanic recesses seen in ornithurines, are similarly observed in Protoavis is questionable, as the preservation of the braincase is not adequate to permit concrete observations on the matter.

The pectoral girdle is discussed by Chatterjee as being highly derived in Protoavis, displaying synapomorphies of Ornithothoraces, including the presence of a hypocleidium-bearing furcula, and a hypertrophied, carinate sternum.

Chatterjee's interpretation of the fossils identified as such in his reviews of the Protoavis material are open to question due to the preservation quality of the elements and as of this time, it is not clear whether either character was in fact present in Protoavis.

Chatterjee implies that this is a highly derived trait which allies Protoavis to Aves, but why this should be so is not clearly discussed in the descriptions of the animal.

In and of itself, the orientation of the glenoid is not a sufficient basis for placing Protoavis within Aves.

At this time the pelvic girdle is not sufficiently well preserved to ascertain whether or not a renal fossa was present, although as no known avian from the Mesozoic displays a renal fossa, it is not clear why Protoavis should, even if it is ornithothoracine.

Chatterjee claims that the humerus of Protoavis is " remarkably avian ", but as in all matters with the fossils referred to this taxon, accurate identification of the elaborate trochanters, ridges, etc., attributed to the humerus by Chatterjee is impossible at this time.

Further material assigned to the taxon has been recovered in isolation with no apparent spatial relationships to each other, and more or less has been referred to Protoavis spuriously.

It has been claimed that there are no suitably par-avian theropods known from the Upper Triassic, which might be allied to Protoavis and therefore it is difficult to conceive of a plausible scenario in which birds might have been derived from theropod ancestors.

Curiously, Gregory Paul has noted that the cervicals of Protoavis and drepanosaurs are astonishingly similar, such they are hardly distinguishable from one another.

If it really is a single animal and not a chimera, Protoavis would raise interesting questions about when birds began to diverge from the dinosaurs, but until better evidence is produced, the animal's status currently remains uncertain.

The entire skull and neck are considered to be most likely from a drepanosaurid because the skull and neck are too big compared to the dorsal vertebrate of Protoavis.

Scientists such as Alan Feduccia have cited Protoavis in an attempt to refute the hypothesis that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

While further material from the Dockum beds may vindicate this peculiar archosaur, for the time being, the case for Protoavis is non-existent.

If there are in fact theropods from the Triassic, which display a suite of par-avian characters, the assertion that conferring taxonomic validity to Protoavis scuttles theropod origin, is found to be lacking in realism.

The holotype specimen of Protoavis ( TTU P 9200 ), the paratype ( TTU P 9201 ), and all referred materials, were discovered in the Dockum Group, from the panhandle of Texas.

Many skeletal elements and partial elements of Protoavis were collected from the Post ( Miller ) Quarry of the Bull Canyon Formation in the 1980s and other specimens referred to Protoavis were collected from the underlying Kirkpatrick Quarry of the Tecovas Formation.

The level of the Dockum group from which the Protoavis material was recovered, was most likely deposited in a deltaic river system.

Due to the nature of the bones being jumbled into sandstone nodules, and completely disarticulated, it has been suggested that Protoavis was reworked from later sediments.

* Protoavis at the Fossil Wiki, upon which this article is adapted from.

In a study of early ornithischian dinosaurs, Sterling Nesbitt and others determined some of the partial remains of Protoavis to be a non-tetanuran theropod.

" As there remains no compelling data to support the avian status of Protoavis or taxonomic validity thereof, it seems mystifying that the matter should be so contentious.

The bone bed excavated by Sankar Chatterjee and his students of Texas Tech University, in which Protoavis was discovered, likely reflects an incident of mass mortality following a flash flood.