Tyarrpecinus was named and described in 2000 based on fossil material recovered from the late Miocene Alcoota Local Fauna of the Waite Formation, Northern Territory.

It is thought that it represents the contents of a crocodile coprolite as the fragments exhibit signs of chemical erosion and have a layer of calcite on them.

[1] Fossils of Tyarrpecinus, as well as those of many other animals from Alcoota, were found in a dense bone bed that accumulated after a mass mortality event.

The species name was chosen to honour Karl Roth, for his contributions towards the natural history of central Australia.

[1] Tyrrapecinus was a medium sized thylacinid, with Wroe (2001) and Rovinsky et al. (2019) both estimating its weight to be 5.4 kg (11.9 lbs).

[9] Murray & Megirian (1992) considered the terrestrial biome to be subtropical savannah and localized forests with little to no vegetation in the catchment area of the basin.

[2] In contrast, Mao & Retallack (2019) inferred the biome to have been open woodland and gallery forest based on paleosol samples.

[10] Contemporaneous with Tyarrpecinus was the large-bodied, possibly durophagous thylacinid Thylacinus potens and the leopard-sized thylacoleonid Wakaleo alcootaensis.