In August 1972, Joe B. Friday, who owned a service station in Lockesburg, Arkansas, noticed some vultures circling above his land.

Checking his cows, he noticed that fossil bones were visible in a ditch near the road where some gravel had been removed recently for the reconstruction of Arkansas Highway 24.

[1] The name Arkansaurus first appeared in print in a popular-science book by Helen Roney Sattler in 1983,[3] remaining an invalid nomen nudum.

The full species name was first published by Angela K. Braden in 1998, mentioning that Quinn had informally used the combination "Arkansaurus fridayi".

[4] In January 2017 Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, submitted a bill to the Arkansas Legislature to designate Arkansaurus the State Dinosaur, along with several cosigners.

[7] The official description of this dinosaur was published on March 19, 2018 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology[7] by paleontologists ReBecca Hunt-Foster and, posthumously, James H. Quinn.

The condition of this third metatarsal suggests that Arkansaurus fridayi is more basal than Asiatic ornithomimosaurs of similar age, but consistent with older North American forms, such as Nedcolbertia.

Ornithomimisaur tracks of similar age are known from north of Moab, Utah, at the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite, in the Ruby Ranch Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation (Early Cretaceous).

This tracksite also preserves the tracks of ankylosaur, hadrosaur, sauropod and several size classes of theropod dinosaurs, along with crocodiles and birds.