[5] The Qiupa Formation preserves a wide variety of dinosaur eggs, many of which have been named as ootaxa, as well as body fossils.

It was described in 2011 by a team of scientists from various institutions in China, South Korea, Japan, and Canada which included Li Xu, Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, Junchang Lü, Yuong-Nam Lee, Yongqing Liu, Kohei Tanaka, Xingliao Zhang, Songhai Jia, and Jiming Zhang.

The holotype consists of a partial postcranial skeleton and is housed in the Henan Geological Museum and was given the designation HGM 41HIII-0106.

[1] In 2017, another team of researchers including Philip J. Currie, described some postcranial ornithomimid remains from the Belly River Group in Alberta, Canada.

The latter specimen was discovered in 1921 before the delineation between the Dinosaur Park and Oldman formations was erected, and the precise locality from which it was collected is not certain.

It extended the temporal range of Qiupalong from the middle Campanian to the latest Maastrichtian - a span of roughly 10 million years.

[2] In 2023, the tibia of a juvenile ornithomimosaur from the Udurchukan Formation of the Amur Oblast in the Russian Far East was described by Alexander Averianov and colleagues.

[1] They did not give an estimate for the animal's overall size,[1] but Rubén Molina-Pérez and Asier Larramendi suggested a length of 2.85 metres (9.4 ft) and a mass of 63 kilograms (139 lb).

These include both ilia, both pubes, parts of both ischia, as well as the tibia, all three metatarsals, a phalanx, and a pedal ungual from the right hindlimb.

The toe claws are curved downwards, which resembles the condition seen in basal ornithomimosaurs and is unlike other derived ornithomimids from Asia.

The metatarsals display the arctometatarsalian condition, and they are almost identical to the other derived ornithomimids including Ornithomimus, Struthiomimus, and Gallimimus.

[1] Several ornithomimosaur specimens recovered from the Belly River Group in Alberta had not been assigned to any particular genus on their initial discovery.

In 2017, a team of authors led by Bradly McFeeters revisited these specimens and referred several of them to the recently described genus, Qiupalong.

The authors also note that the morphology of these elements is broadly similar to other North American ornithomimosaurs and if CMN 8902 is an individual of Qiupalong, it supports a close relationship with Struthiomimus and Ornithomimus.

They also remark that, because of the poor preservation conditions of many ornithomimosaur fossils, it is difficult to determine whether or not other taxa possessed this trait.

[2] Most recently, in 2023, Alexander Averianov and colleagues published a description of the tibia of a juvenile ornithomimosaur, which they stated bears considerable similarity to the holotype of Qiupalong henanensis.

It was the first material of an ornithomimosaur to be described from this locality, which had previously only yielded theropod remains from dromaeosaurids, tyrannosaurids, and the enigmatic Ricardoestesia.

[10] Averianov and Dieter-Sues recovered a slightly different phylogeny[11] using the data set produced by Jonah Choiniere and colleagues in 2012.

This, coupled with the results of several phylogenetic analyses, suggest that Qiupalong originated in North America and only migrated into Asia later, near the very end of the Cretaceous Period.

[2] This is consistent with the suggestion by other researchers that significant faunal interchange took place during the Campanian and Maastrichtian stages between the two continents via the Bering Land Bridge, which has its origins in the Cretaceous.

Section A, in which Qiupalong was found, is subdivided into 60 distinct beds, which themselves are numbered in ascending order from oldest to youngest.

Dozens of species are known from various parts of the formation including massive tyrannosaurids, hadrosaurids, ceratopsids, and ankylosaurs in addition to a variety of smaller dinosaurs like leptoceratopsids, pachycephalosaurids, dromaeosaurs, caenagnathids, troodontids, and other ornithomimosaurs.

These would have included turtles, lizards (such as the genus Tianyusaurus), small mammals, and uniquely an edentulous enantiornithine Yuornis.