[2] These syntypes were found in 1879 at Port Clarence in Alaska and at two sites on the Chukotka peninsula (the village of Nunyamo and Penkigney Bay) on the eastern coast of Siberia.

[5] In 1919, the American biologist Ralph V. Chamberlain described Cryophilus alaskanus as a new species based on two specimens collected in 1916 from the tundra near Nome in Alaska.

These specimens were collected at Reindeer Station in the Northwest Territories by the Canadian zoologist John R. Vockeroth in 1948 and represent the first record of this species in Canada.

[2][3] Furthermore, the labrum in this genus features side pieces that nearly touch in the middle, making the intermediate part inconspicuous.

[6] Three other Arctogeophilus species found in Russia, A. attemsi, A. macrocephalus, and A. sachalinus, are so similar to A. glacialis that some authors have suggested that these three may be junior synonyms of A.

[2][12] The species A. glacialis may be distinguished from these close relatives, however, by the lappets on the first maxillae, the denticles on the forcipular articles, and the absence of ventral pore-fields.