It is known from an incomplete skull and postcranial skeleton recovered from the Kaiparowits Formation and was specifically named T. curriei in honor of famed paleontologist Philip J. Currie.

[1] In 2017, a new specimen of Teratophoneus was discovered in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and airlifted to the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City.

[3] Compared to the skull of Albertosaurus, Teratophoneus is roughly twenty-three percent shorter in proportion between the lacrimal bone of the antorbital fenestra and the tip of the snout.

[10] Dryptosaurus aquilunguis Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis Bistahieversor sealeyi Gorgosaurus libratus Albertosaurus sarcophagus Qianzhousaurus sinensis Alioramus remotus Alioramus altai Teratophoneus curriei Dynamoterror dynastes Lythronax argestes Nanuqsaurus hoglundi Thanatotheristes degrootorum Daspletosaurus torosus Daspletosaurus horneri Zhuchengtyrannus magnus Tarbosaurus bataar Tyrannosaurus rex A bone bed of fossils from the Rainbows and Unicorns Quarry in Southern Utah's Kaiparowits Formation described in 2021 attributed to Teratophoneus suggests that the genus may have been a social pack-hunter.

[12][13] During the Late Cretaceous, the site within the Kaiparowits Formation was located on Laramidia near its eastern shore on the Western Interior Seaway, a large inland sea that split North America into two island landmasses, the other one being Appalachia in the east.

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

[15] Teratophoneus curriei shared its paleoenvironment with other theropods, such as dromaeosaurids, the troodontid Talos sampsoni, ornithomimids like Ornithomimus velox, and the caenagnathid Hagryphus giganteus.

Non-theropod dinosaurs included the ankylosaur Akainacephalus johnsoni, the hadrosaurs Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus and Gryposaurus monumentensis, and the ceratopsians Utahceratops gettyi, Nasutoceratops titusi, and Kosmoceratops richardsoni.

[16] Other paleofauna present in the Kaiparowits Formation included chondrichthyans (sharks and rays), frogs, salamanders, turtles, lizards, and crocodilians, with Deinosuchus being the apex predator.