The specimen is in the collection of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, where it is catalogued under accession number IVPP V11579.

[1] The authors who initially described the fossil, classified Eshanosaurus as a member of the Therizinosauroidea on the basis of six distinct characteristics of the jaw and teeth, making it the earliest known coelurosaur, a maniraptoran living long before Archaeopteryx, 60 million years before certain basal therizinosaurs such as Falcarius and Beipiaosaurus.

Wolfe, in their 2001 paper describing the therizinosaur Nothronychus, related personal correspondence that the teeth of Eshanosaurus bore a medial ridge only seen in prosauropods or basal Sauropodomorpha.

The authors arrived at their conclusion that the specimen represented an Early Jurassic therizinosauroid, by testing the possibility that it were a basal sauropodomorph as rigorously as they could using the comparative method: the six traits found were those shared between Eshanosaurus and therizinosaurs to the exclusion of prosauropods.

Barrett examined the type specimen in detail, noting six features shared with therizinosaurs but not shown by prosauropods.