[1] The genus is known from a single hindwing specimen, the holotype, currently deposited in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History, as number "69173", and which was first described by Dr Theodore D.A.

[1] The name is a combination of the Greek deino meaning "terrible" or "monstrous" and "Panorpa", the type genus of Panorpidae the family in which Dinopanorpa was first placed.

[1] The 30 millimetres (1.2 in) long specimen is a nearly complete compression fossil missing only a small section near the tip of the wing due to a break in the matrix, and having well preserved dark and light coloration.

[2] This placement was changed by Dr Robert Tillyard who reexamined the genus in 1933 and moved Dinoanorpa to the extinct family Orthophlebiidae.

In a 1978 publication Dr. V. Zherikhin reported, but did not illustrate or figure, a scorpionfly specimen which belongs to a new species of Dinopanorpa from the Paleocene Tadushi Formation in Primorsky Krai.