Of the two described species, Libotonius blakeburnensis is only known in the Allenby Formation's Whipsaw Creek sites south of Princeton in southcentral British Columbia.

[4][5] The second described species, Libotonius pearsoni known exclusively by fossils from the Klondike Mountain Formation exposed northwest of Republic in Ferry County, northeast Central Washington.

The fossils were tentatively identified by paleoichthyologist David Dunkle as belonging to Erismatopterus, a genus now known to be confined to the Green River Formation in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah.

[1] Description of the genus and type species was based on the holotype, "ROM 11157 A&B", plus a series of seven topotypes all collected by Wilson during 1970 and 1971 field work at the Blakeburm mine.

Wilson coined the genus name Libotonius as a patronym honoring Mr Liboton, a fossil museum and rock shop owner from Vaseaux Lake who contributed L. blakeburnensis and Amyzon brevipinne specimens for study.

Wilson designated the Blakeburn Mine, ROM site L95, south of Coalmont the type locality of the genus and species in the Allenby Formation.

[13] He cited the work of Colin Patterson and Donn Eric Rosen, then "in press" and released in 1989, where they state finding no convincing characters to place Libotonius within the family Percopsidae.

[15] By 2013, the placement of Libotonius was again shifting, this time back towards Percopsidae in various chapters of the book Mesozoic Fishes 5 – Global Diversity and Evolution.

[17] Three years later Richard Van der Laan's 2016 Family-group names of fossil fishes listed "Libotoniidae" as a junior synonym of Percopsidae, but did not give a rational or reference for the placement.

The premaxilla are narrower and longer in proportion then seen in Amphiplaga, Erismatopterus and Percopsis, and unlike those genera, it appears to lack a protrusion on the upper edge, the postmaxillary process.

There are a reduced number of teeth in Libotonius species due to the endopterygoid, ectopterygoid and vomer bones all being toothless, while the palatine is toothed.

The highlands, including the Early Eocene formations between Driftwood Canyon at the north and Republic at the south, have been described as one of the "Great Canadian Lagerstätten"[21] based on the diversity, quality and unique nature of the paleofloral and paleofaunal biotas that are preserved.

The highlands temperate biome preserved across a large transect of lakes recorded many of the earliest appearances of modern genera, while also documenting the last stands of ancient lines.

[21] The warm temperate highland floras in association with downfaulted lacustrine basins and active volcanism are noted to have no exact modern equivalents.

[21] The highlands likely had a mesic upper microthermal to lower mesothermal climate, in which winter temperatures rarely dropped low enough for snow, and which were seasonably equitable.