It is a stocky olive-brown bird with brown-streaked buffish white underparts, grey feet, a brown iris and a distinctive serrated bill.

The tooth-billed bowerbird is endemic to the mountain forests of northeast Queensland, Australia.

[5] Its diet consists mainly of fruits and young leaves of forest trees.

The male is polygamous and builds a display-court or "stage-type bower" (hence the alternate name stagemaker), decorated with fresh green leaves laid with their pale undersides facing up.

The display-court consists of a cleared area containing at least one tree trunk used by the male for perching.