In the early 1930s, famed dinosaur hunter and paleontologist Barnum Brown collected the holotype specimen of "Sauropelta" (AMNH 3032, a partial skeleton) from the Cloverly Formation in Big Horn County, Montana. The locality is inside the Crow Indian Reservation. Brown also discovered two other specimens (AMNH 3035 and 3036). The latter is one of the best-preserved nodosaurid skeletons known to science, includes a large amount of "in situ" armor, and is on display in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. AMNH 3035 preserves the cervical armor and most of a skull, missing only the end of the snout. Expeditions in the 1960s led by the equally renowned John Ostrom of Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History recovered additional incomplete specimens from the Cloverly. In 1970, Ostrom coined the genus "Sauropelta" to include remains discovered by both expeditions. Derived from the Greek "σαυρος" (') ('lizard') and "πελτε" (') ('shield'), this name is a reference to its bony armor. Although Ostrom originally named the species "S. edwardsi", nomenclaturist George Olshevsky corrected the spelling to "S. edwardsorum" in 1991 to conform to Latin grammar rules.