Bathyotica is a clade of crurotarsan archosaurs that includes the superorder Crocodylomorpha and its sister taxon Erpetosuchus, a small Triassic suchian.

The sloping bones open up a space called the otic recess, which is positioned behind the lower temporal fossa, a hole on the side of the skull behind the eye sockets.

However, the phylogenetic analysis in that paper resulted in Erpetosuchidae being part of a polytomy with the two main branches of Archosauria, Pseudosuchia and Avemetatarsalia, a distant position from Crocodylomorpha.

However, this placement was uncertain and the exact phylogenetic position of Erpetosuchus remains unclear because it possesses many autapomorphies or unique features that are not seen in other archosaurs.

Even when Erpetosuchus granti was solely used to represent Erpetosuchidae, it was recovered as the sister taxon of aetosaurs + Revueltosaurus, at the base of Suchia.