 The type species "Limnoscelis paludis" was collected by the fossil hunter David Baldwin between 1877 and 1880 from the El Cobre Canyon beds of the Cutler Formation, New Mexico.Baldwin was collecting fossils in service of the paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh during the bone wars.Although Marsh would describe several specimens from Baldwin’s collections, many fossils, including "Limnoscelis paludis", would be deposited without description at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale College for several decades.