Talos is known only from the holotype specimen UMNH VP 19479, a partial postcranial skeleton of a subadult individual including the hindlimbs, pelvis, vertebral fragments, chevrons and the left ulna.

It was first named by Lindsay E. Zanno, David J. Varricchio, Patrick M. O'Connor, Alan L. Titus, and Michael J. Knell in 2011 and the type species is Talos sampsoni.

Argon-argon radiometric dating indicates that the Kaiparowits Formation was deposited between 76.1 and 74.0 million years ago, during the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous period.

The plateau where dinosaurs lived was an ancient floodplain dominated by large channels and abundant wetland peat swamps, ponds and lakes, and was bordered by highlands.

[6] Talos shared its paleoenvironment with theropods such as dromaeosaurids, ornithomimids like Ornithomimus velox, tyrannosaurids like Teratophoneus, armored ankylosaurids such as Akainacephalus johnsoni, the duckbilled hadrosaurs Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus and Gryposaurus monumentensis, the ceratopsians Utahceratops gettyi, Nasutoceratops titusi and Kosmoceratops richardsoni and the oviraptorosaurian Hagryphus giganteus.