The study of its inner ear revealed that Anteosaurus was a largely terrestrial, agile predator with highly advanced senses of vision, balance and coordination.

The type specimen of Anteosaurus is an incomplete skull that Watson had initially classified in the genus Titanosuchus, named after the Titans of the Greek mythology.

[10] On the palate, the transverse processes of pterygoids are massively enlarged at their distal end, giving them a palmate shape in ventral view, as is the case in Titanophoneus and Sinophoneus.

[20] More recently, Julien Benoit and colleagues have shown that the head of Anteosaurus had a natural posture that was less tilted downwards than that of the tapinocephalids and that, unlike the latter, it does not line up ideally with the vertebral column to optimize a head-to-head combat.

[22] Boonstra in 1954 indicated that the overall dentition of Anteosaurus—characterized by prominent canines, elongated incisors, and relatively weak postcanines—reflects a specialized carnivore, and that this anteosaurid did not rely on chewing and shearing when feeding, but rather it was well-adapted for tearing flesh chunks from prey.

[8] Later in 1955, Boonstra indicated that anteosaurids had a crawling locomotion similar to crocodiles, based mostly on their hip joint and femur morphology, useful in a semiaquatic setting.

[23] In 2008 Mivah F. Ivakhnenko analyzed a vast majority of Permian therapsid skulls, and suggested that anteosaurs, such as Anteosaurus, were strict semiaquatic piscivorous (fish-eater) synapsids, mostly similar to modern-day otters.

The typical dentition of piscivore animals include elongate, numerous, strongly recurved, and very sharp teeth in order to hold and kill fast-moving fish prey.

He also noted that anteosaurid teeth are mostly similar to that of large tyrannosaurids (postcanines robust bases, faceted surfaces, and obliquely angled serrations), whose dentition is interpreted as bone-crunching.

[10] In 2020 Kévin Rey with colleagues analyzed stable oxygen isotope compositions of phosphate from teeth and bones from pareiasaurs and Anteosaurus, in order to estimate their affinity for water dependence.

It was also determined that the area of the brain of Anteosaurus that was responsible for coordinating the movements of the eyes with the head was exceptionally large; an important feature in ensuring it could track its prey accurately.

These discoveries greatly expanded both the stratigraphic range of these three dinocephalian genera and the upper limit of the Tapinocephalus Assemblage Zone that reaches the base of the Teekloof Formation.

[33][34] The genus Anteosaurus is possibly present in Russia based on a fragmentary cranial remain found in the 19th century in the Republic of Tatarstan (Alexeyevsky District).

It was roughly C-shaped: its northern (Laurasia) and southern (Gondwana) parts were connected to the west, but separated to the east by a very large oceanic bay - the Tethys Sea.

[41] Subsequently, the Lower Permian had first seen the retreat of glaciers and the emergence of subpolar tundra and taiga-like vegetation (dominated by Botrychiopsis and Gangamopteris),[42] then the introduction of warmer and wetter climatic conditions that allowed the development of the Mesosaurus fauna and the Glossopteris flora.

At the end of the 1950s, Edna Plumstead compared the Karoo to today's Siberia or Canada, with a highly seasonal climate including very cold winters and temperate summers supporting the Glossopteris flora, which would have been restricted to sheltered basins.

Keddy Yemane thus suggested that the vast river system and the many giant lakes present at the time throughout southern Africa must have significantly moderated the continentality of the Karoo climate during most of the Permian.

[46] Paleobotanical studies focusing on the characteristic morphology of plant leaves and the growth rings of fossil woods also indicate a seasonal climate[39][37] with summer temperatures of up to 30 °C and free-frost winters.

[39] According to Richard Rayner, the high southern latitudes experienced very hot and humid summers, with an average of 18 hours of light per day for more than four months during which precipitation was comparable to the annual amount falling in the present-day tropics.

[39] The habit in Glossopteris of losing its leaves at the beginning of the bad season would be linked to a shorter duration of daylight rather than the existence of very cold winter temperatures.

[39] From the geochemical study of sediments from several Karoo sites, Kay Scheffler also obtains a temperate climate (with mean annual temperatures of about 15 to 20 °C), with free-frost winter, but with an increase in aridity during the Middle Permian.

[41] The sediments of the Abrahamskraal Formation consists of a succession of sandstones, and versicolor siltstones and mudstones, deposited by large rivers that flowed from south to north from the Gondwanide mountain range.

Many fossil traces (footprints, ripple marks, mudcracks) indicate that swampy areas, which were the most extensive habitat, were frequently exposed to the open air and should not often be deeply flooded.

[38][39] Aquatic fauna included the lamellibranch Palaeomutela, the palaeonisciformes fishes Atherstonia, Bethesdaichthys, Blourugia, Namaichthys and Westlepis, and large freshwater predators, the temnospondyl amphibians Rhinesuchoides and Rhinesuchus.

Large-sized vegetarians were mainly represented by numerous dinocephalians including the tapinocephalids Agnosaurus,[26][71] Criocephalosaurus,[72][73][32][71] Mormosaurus,[26][71] Moschognathus,[26][71] Moschops,[74][75][76][71] Riebeeckosaurus,[75][77] Struthiocephalus[78][79][76][80] Struthionops,[26] and Tapinocephalus,[72][81][76][71] the Styracocephalid Styracocephalus,[82][83][84] and the huge titanosuchids Jonkeria and Titanosuchus.

[86][87][88][89][90] The small to medium-sized forms included basal anomodonts (the non-dicynodonts Anomocephalus,[91][92] Galechirus, Galeops and Galepus[93][57][26]) and numerous dicynodonts (Brachyprosopus,[94] Colobodectes,[95][96] Pristerodon,[57] and the Pylaecephalids Diictodon,[97][57] Eosimops,[98] Prosictodon,[99] and Robertia,[57]).

Named by Watson in 1921, Anteosaurus was longtime classified as a 'Titanosuchian Deinocephalian', and it is only in 1954 that Boonstra separated the Titanosuchians in two families: Jonkeridae (a junior synonym of Titanosuchidae) and Anteosauridae.

[10] Below the cladogramm of Kammerer published in 2011 : Anteosaurus magnificus Titanophoneus adamanteus Titanophoneus potens Sinophoneus yumenensis Syodon biarmicum Australosyodon nyaphuli Notosyodon gusevi Archaeosyodon praeventor Microsyodon orlovi Tapinocaninus pamelae Estemmenosuchus mirabilis Biarmosuchus tener In describing the new Brazilian anteosaur Pampaphoneus, Cisneros et al. presented another cladogram confirming the recognition of the clades Anteosaurinae and Syodontinae.

T. adamanteus is here the sister taxon of a clade composed of T. potens and Anteosaurus :[11] Biarmosuchus tener Estemmenosuchus uralensis Ulemosaurus svijagensis Tapinocaninus pamelae Archaeosyodon praeventor Sinophoneus yumenensis Titanophoneus adamanteus Titanophoneus potens Anteosaurus magnificus Pampaphoneus biccai Notosyodon gusevi Syodon biarmicum Australosyodon nyaphuli One of the four cladograms of Cisneros et al. published in the Supporting Information of the same article, and including Microsyodon.

The cladogramm of Jun Liu in 2013:[106] Biarmosuchus tener Estemmenosuchus uralensis Ulemosaurus svijagensis Tapinocaninus pamelae Sinophoneus yumenensis Archaeosyodon praeventor Anteosaurus magnificus Titanophoneus adamanteus Titanophoneus potens Pampaphoneus biccai Notosyodon gusevi Syodon biarmicum Australosyodon nyaphuli Microsyodon orlovi As defined by Lieuwe Dirk Boonstra, Anteosaurus is "a genus of anteosaurids in which the postfrontal forms a boss of variable size overhanging the dorso-posterior border of the orbit."