[1] This dinosaur is known from the fossil remains of only two individuals, found in the Upper Elliot Formation of Qacha's Nek District in Lesotho and Cape Province in South Africa.

The Upper Elliot is thought to date from the Hettangian and Sinemurian stages of the Early Jurassic Period, approximately 200 to 190 million years ago.

[2] This formation is thought to preserve sand dunes as well as seasonal floodplains, in a semiarid environment with sporadic rainfall.

Other dinosaurs found in this formation include the theropod Megapnosaurus, the sauropodomorph Massospondylus, as well as other heterodontosaurids like Heterodontosaurus and Lycorhinus.

[2][3] Lycorhinus and Heterodontosaurus both had high-crowned cheek teeth, which overlapped each other in the jaw, forming a continuous chewing surface analogous to those of Cretaceous hadrosaurids.

Abrictosaurus had more widely separated cheek teeth, with lower crowns, more similar to other early ornithischians.

As UCL B54 lacked the caniniforms which had been found in the type species, Lycorhinus angustidens, Thulborn believed it to be female.

[8] In 1975, James Hopson redescribed a fragmentary heterodontosaur skull (UCL A100) found in South Africa that Thulborn had previously assigned to Lycorhinus angustidens.