Despite receiving widespread attention in popular books on dinosaurs, and the usage of a complete mounted skeleton cast in museums throughout the world, Dromaeosaurus is poorly known from actual fossils.

The first known Dromaeosaurus remains were discovered by paleontologist Barnum Brown during a 1914 expedition to Red Deer River on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History.

[6] The find, holotype AMNH 5356, consisted of a partial skull 24 cm (9+1⁄2 in) in length, a mandible, two hyoids, a first metacarpal and some foot bones.

Most of them were based on fragmentary material, some belonging to other genera, and far less complete than that of Dromaeosaurus albertensis, and those that haven't been reclassified are considered nomina dubia today.

However, some fragmentary remains such as teeth that may belong to this genus have been found from the late Maastrichtian age Hell Creek and Lance Formations, dating to 66 million years ago.

[6] Dromaeosaurus also had a vein at the back of the head, the vena capitis dorsalis, that drained the front neck muscles through two long canals running to the posterior surface of the brain.

[13] Matthew and Brown originally placed Dromaeosaurus to its own subfamily, the Dromaeosaurinae, within the "Deinodontidae" (now known as Tyrannosauridae) based on some similarities in the general proportions of the skull.

[5] In 1969, John H. Ostrom recognized that Dromaeosaurus shared many features with Velociraptor and the newly discovered Deinonychus, and assigned these forms to a new family: Dromaeosauridae.

The teeth tend to be more heavily worn than those of its relative Saurornitholestes, suggesting that its jaws were used for crushing and tearing rather than simply slicing through flesh.

Therrien et al. (2005) estimated that Dromaeosaurus had a bite nearly three times as powerful as that of Velociraptor and suggested it relied more on its jaws than on the sickle claw to kill its prey.