In 1988, paleontologist Lev Aleksandrovich Nesov based on these published the name Turanoceratops tardabilis,[1] but did not provide a description so that for the time being it remained a nomen nudum.

More general derived traits are the exclusion of the frontal bone from the upper rim of the eye socket and the presence of incipient cavities in the skull roof.

[4] Turanoceratops belonged to the Ceratopsia (the name is Greek for "horned face"), a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks which thrived in North America and Asia during the Cretaceous Period, which ended 66 million years ago.

A 2009 study led by Hans-Dieter Sues analysed additional fossil material of Turanoceratops and concluded that, contrary to expectations, it represented a true (though "transitional") member of the family Ceratopsidae.

Farke and colleagues ran an independent phylogenetic analysis of the new Turanoceratops fossils and found that it was a close relative of Ceratopsidae (the immediate sister group) but was not a true member of that clade.

[7] However, the describers of the only known Asian ceratopsid Sinoceratops conducted a phylogenetic analysis and concluded that Turanoceratops was more derived than Zuniceratops and was outside of Ceratopsidae, because it lacks several important synapomorphies of this group.