In a recent revision of the shell collection of the Natural History Museum in Trieste, Italy, the holotype of Pterocera kochii Freyer 1855 was found. The original description was published on a difficidt to obtain Austrian magazine and is here fully quoted and translated to English. A discussion on the type specimen is given and the first photographs of the specimen provided. The recognition of the holotype is based on morphological characters of the aperture and of the digitations, on handwritten annotations on the shell and on the history of the reassessments of the collections in the Museum. Pterocera kochii is considered a junior synonym of Lambis chiragra chiragra (Linne 1758) today.