Caerorhachis has also been classified as the sister taxon of temnospondyls, a large group of extinct amphibians, based on the presence of several primitive traits.
[4] A 2003 phylogenetic analysis of early tetrapods placed Caerorhachis outside the clade that included temnospondyls and anthracosaurs in an ancestral position to both groups.
It lacks the lateral lines across the skull that served as an adaptation for earlier aquatic tetrapods and their ancestors.
The large, well developed limbs suggest it was able to move on land better than other early tetrapods like colosteids and baphetids.
Robert Holmes and Robert L. Carroll, the first to describe Caerorhachis, interpreted it as "[an] animal spending much of its life in the damp mud on the margins of ponds or streams, feeding on stranded fish, or occasionally venturing into the water to catch aquatic larvae of other amphibians.