In 1998, geologist Friedrich Albat, prospecting for the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe Museum of Natural History, discovered the remains of a large theropod at the abandoned Pott quarry in the Wiehen Hills near Minden, Westphalia.

The numerous breaks and cracks found in the material risked being destroyed upon removal from the matrix, and so led the excavation team to instead extract them into jackets that were then later prepared in the laboratories of the LWL Museum für Naturkunde.

Reports in the German edition of the National Geographic of a rib 50% larger than that of Allosaurus stirred speculations that it reached 15 metres (49 ft) in length.

[5] In 2016, the fossils were named and described as the type species Wiehenvenator albati by Oliver W. M. Rauhut, Tom R. Hübner and Klaus-Peter Lanser.

[6] The type specimen of Wiehenvenator consists of an assortment of bones found in the Ornatenton Formation dating from the middle Callovian.

They include parts of the skull (right premaxilla, right maxilla, right lacrimal bone, right postorbital and possible front branch of the right quadratojugal), the anterior parts of a right lower jaw (dentary), six teeth, three tail vertebrae, a pair of fused median segments of rear gastralia, one complete rib and four rib fragments, a finger phalanx, both fibulae, a right astragalus and a right calcaneum.

[1] On October 3, 2014, in an overgrown quarry to the west, the skull and lower jaws of the crocodylomorph Metriorhynchus were discovered by an honorary member of the LWL Museum für Naturkunde.