It was discovered on 5 June 1989, by German astronomer Werner Landgraf at ESO's La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.
[1] One day before its first identification as 1931 AE, a precovery was taken at Lowell Observatory in 1931, extending the body's observation arc by 58 years prior to its official discovery at La Silla.
[10] A rotational lightcurve of Tibúrcio was obtained from photometric observations by astronomer David Higgins at the Australian Hunters Hill Observatory (E14) in October 2010.
[1][4][5][6][7][8][9] Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.049 and calculates a diameter of 26.1 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 11.8.
[3] This minor planet was named after Brazilian amateur astronomer and student of information science, Júlio César dos Santos Tibúrcio.