A bird fossil mistaken for a toad

The fossil of a bird discovered in 1781 in the quarries of Montmartre was one day mistaken for a frog. The scientist Alberto Fortis indeed contested its avian nature in 1800, believing that the original drawing exaggerated the feathers and that it was rather an amphibian. Georges Cuvier then restored the truth in 1812 in his work on fossil bones, before the species was finally named in his honor in 1852 by Paul Gervais.