[3] Dr. Mark Hutchinson, reptile and amphibian curator at the South Australian Museum, caught the immature female taipan while it was crossing a dirt track on a sunny afternoon.

The reptile was about 1.0 m (39 inches) in total length (body and tail), but because taipan species are among the most venomous snakes in the world, Hutchinson did not inspect the creature on site.

At first, it was tentatively identified as a western brown snake because of the similar size and colouring; several weeks later, however, Western Australia Museum reptile collection manager Brad Maryan noticed the now-preserved snake had a large, pale head similar to the coastal taipan.

[5] The holotype, nicknamed "Scully" after the X-Files TV character, is an immature snake about 1 m long, which means that scientists do not know the true adult size of the species, though some taipans can reach a total length of about 3 m (about 10 ft).

[5] The new species, O. temporalis, has a LD50 measured on mice to be 0.075 mg/Kg, making it likely to be extremely dangerous to a human if bitten, albeit less toxic than the inland taipan, which was found by the same study to have a LD50 of 0.0225 mg/kg.