[2] He based the original description of this species on a female holotype found by the American biologist Charles F. Baker on Mount Makiling on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.

[6] Shinohara based this description on specimens collected from the town of Manazuru in the Kanagawa prefecture on the island of Honshu in Japan.

[6][5] In 2007, the Italian biologists Marco Uliana, Lucio Bonato, and Alessandro Minelli deemed M. manazurensis to be a junior synonym of M.

[10] This centipede is found not only in the Philippines but also in Taiwan and Singapore,[1] where this species has been recorded in the Bukit Timah area.

[5] A phylogenetic analysis of the family Mecistocephalidae based on morphology places M. nannocornis in a clade with M. spissus,[12] which was the first species in the genus Mecistocephalus to be discovered with only 45 leg pairs.

[5] The basal element of each ultimate leg features numerous pores of moderate size.