Cryolophosaurus originally was collected during the 1990-91 austral summer on Mount Kirkpatrick in the Beardmore Glacier region of the Transantarctic Mountains. The discovery was made by Hammer, a professor at Augustana College, and his team. The fossils were found in the siliceous siltstone of the Hanson Formation, formerly the upper Falla Formation, and dated to the Pliensbachian Stage of the early Jurassic. Cryolophosaurus was the second dinosaur, and first theropod, to be discovered in Antarctica. It was discovered after Antarctopelta, but named earlier.