In the summer of 1970, the National Geographic Society and the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History organized a joint paleontological expedition, led by geologist William J. Morris, to the Arroyo del Rosario in Baja California, Mexico.

While prospecting, volunteer Harley J. Garbani discovered the fragmentary skeleton of a theropod north of Punta Baja near Cerro Rayado.

[1] The collected specimen, IGM 5307 (formerly LACM 20877), was found in a layer of what is likely the La Bocana Roja Formation, originally thought to date from the late Campanian, about 73 million years old.

More recent research has provided conflicting dates, possibly as old as around 93.6 million years old (Cenomanian–Turonian),[2] but vertebrate remains suggest a younger age.

[1] In 2024, Rivera-Sylva & Longrich described a second species, Labocania aguillonae, based on fragmentary remains found in the Campanian-aged Cerro del Pueblo Formation of Coahuila, Mexico.

[7] In their description of theropod material assigned to the new Labocania species L. aguillonae, Rivera-Sylva & Longrich (2024) found support for a position within the tyrannosaurine clade Teratophoneini.

Their phylogenetic analyses recovered Labocania in a clade with Bistahieversor, Dynamoterror, Teratophoneus, and two unnamed taxa from the Aguja and Two Medicine formations.