An official reference profile for the base of the Cenomanian (a GSSP) is located in an outcrop at the western flank of Mont Risou, near the village of Rosans in the French Alps (département Hautes-Alpes, coordinates: 44°23'33"N, 5°30'43"E).
The Cenomanian (early Late Cretaceous) marine bird Pasquiaornis tankei (Tokaryk, Cumbaa and Storer, 1997) from Carrot River, Saskatchewan, Canada was named in Tanke's honor.
The age of the sequence ranges from Cenomanian through to Campanian, The upper boundary is an unconformity across which rocks of Maastrichtian to Paleocene age are missing.
It is known from a skull and partial skeleton found in early Cenomanian-age rocks from Normandy, France.
The fossil genus Insitiocarpus has been found in deposits from the Cenomanian period, while the other extant genera Sabia and Meliosma have been found in European deposits from the Turonian and the Maastrichtian, respectively.
There is a possible age difference of perhaps over thirty million years between the Berriasian-Valanginian British and the younger Albian-Cenomanian American form.
The type species, U. itemirensis, was named by Alexander Averianov and Hans-Dieter Sues in 2007 on the basis of a single left dentary with teeth from the Cenomanian Dzharakuduk Formation.