[1] Niebla eburnea is best recognized by the ivory-like cortex, appearing mostly smooth except for the creamy pastry-like ripples or creases, occasionally with transverse cracks; the thallus divided into subterete branches, generally half-twisted near base and often near apex, otherwise branches straight to curved, often with short elliptiform dilated segments, near apex more like the palm of the hand from which various claw-like to finger-like branchlets spread, often blackened around the base to a short distance above.

Niebla eburnea is further characterized by the presence of the lichen substance divaricatic acid, along with triterpenes and pigments concentrated near base.

On 30 April 1985 while collecting a minimum 25 gram samples near Cerro Solo in northern Baja California for a biodiversity screening of lichens in the search of new drugs by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Natural Products Branch to treat HIV, it was considered to represent another species that differed from Niebla homalea that had been collected near Punta Banda on the day before (29 April 1985, WBA-277, S & M 9032C, 58 g).

Instead approximately 40 specimens from the sample were extracted with acetone to identify the lichen substances by thin-layer chromatography.

This material then became the type collection for Niebla eburnea, described by Richard Spjut in 1996,[1] and for exsiccati distributed later to other institutions through the ABLS Lichen Exchange[4] that was at Arizona State University.