The holotype of Dinosaurus murchisonii was collected in a copper mine in the Orenburg Governorate of the Russian Empire during the 1840s.

He provisionally returned the species to Rhopalodon, as he felt there were not enough differences yet identified to justify a second genus, and noted the existence of the similarly-named taxon Dinosauria, named by Richard Owen only a few years prior, in 1842.

[4] Wagenheim von Qualen donated both specimens to the collection of Maximilian de Beuharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg, and the originals have since been lost.

[8] As such, he classified Dinosaurus in the family Phthinosuchidae, which he grouped with Rubidgeidae[a] in the superfamily Rubidgeoidea of the order Gorgonopia.

[10] Kammerer has remarked that the limited anatomical information available for Dinosaurus makes it hard to confirm this proposed synonymy.