In 1846, Pierre Philippe Émile Matheron, a French geologist and paleontologist, described several large bones from Provence, France. In the spring of 1869, Matheron formally described these remains, including a partial femur, fibula and possible tibia and a pair of associated caudal vertebrae, as the holotype specimen of a new taxon, "Hypselosaurus priscus". Among the bones, portions of the femur shaft are not preserved, along with a majority of the tibia, while both the fibula and vertebrae are entirely preserved. The layer the fossils came from is likely from the late Late Cretaceous, specifically 70 million years ago.