[2] This species features 43 pairs of legs, a number rarely found in the family Mecistocephalidae and recorded in only one other genus in this family:[2][3] In the genus Tygarrup, an undescribed species found in the Andaman Islands also has 43 leg pairs.

[4][5] This species has been recorded in hundreds of locations in mountainous regions and adjacent areas in Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

[2] The German zoologist Carl L. Koch first described this species in 1847 based on type material found in Carniola in Slovenia.

Since 1889, however, authorities have deemed M. hungaricus to be a junior synonym of D. cariolensis and have considered these centipedes to be the same species.

A phylogenetic analysis of the genus Dicellophilus based on morphology places D. carniolensis by itself on the most basal branch in a phylogenetic tree, with a sister group formed by all the other species in the genus in their own separate clade.