The holotype specimen of Olorotitan, consisting of a nearly complete skeleton, was discovered in field work in the Udurchukan Formation of Kundur in the Amur region of Russia between 1999 and 2001.

[1] The generic name Olorotitan means "titanic swan" because its neck is longer when compared with other hadrosaurs, while the specific descriptor arharensis refers to Arhara County where the fossil was found.

Further along the vertebral series, in the proximal third of the tail, there are articulations between the tips of the neural spines, making that caudal area particularly rigid; the regularity of these connections suggests that they are not due to a pathology, although more specimens are needed to be certain.

[1] As a hadrosaurid, Olorotitan would have been a bipedal/quadrupedal herbivore, eating plants with a sophisticated skull that permitted a grinding motion analogous to chewing, and was furnished with hundreds of continually-replaced teeth.

Additionally, remains from turtles, crocodilians, theropods, and nodosaurids were found at its discovery site,[1] and the Saurolophus-like hadrosaurine Kerberosaurus is also known from roughly contemporaneous rocks in the area.