Due to its relationship with crocodylomorphs native to Gondwana, Doratodon is considered to be an important indicator for the repeated faunal interchange between Europe and Africa during the Cretaceous.

[2] Harry Govier Seeley however cast doubt over Bunzel's designation in 1881, proposing that the material instead belonged to a dinosaur he called Doratodon, coining the genus name.

Although the name was kept, later researchers including Franz Nopcsa and Charles Craig Mook would return to Bunzel's classification of the material as a type of crocodyliform.

[3] Less complete remains sometimes assigned to Doratodon are known from Romania's Hateg Island[5][6][7][8] and Italy's Polazzo fossil site, dating to the Maastrichtian and Coniacian-Santonian respectively.

[4] The premaxilla also shows that the snout was rather tall, as expected from a sebecosuchian, and the nares were located towards the rostrum's tip, positioned in a way that causes them to open primarily dorsolaterally (upward and to the sides) and slightly towards the front.

In the type species, D. carcharidens, the teeth show very little variation in size, with the dental alveoli generally ranging between 3–5 mm (0.12–0.20 in) in length with the 4th tooth being the largest (though not hypertrophied as in Baurusuchus).

This interpretation was mostly dismissed during the early to mid 20th century in favor of Mook's suggestion that it was a goniopholid, a type of neosuchian that more closely resembles modern crocodiles.

Using both the holotype dentary and the Hungarian material, Rabi and Sebök recovered Doratodon as a basal member within Sebecosuchia itself, rather than a sister taxon to the group.

Regardless, this result is generally in line with what was previously recovered by Company et al. and marks a clear shift in classification between pre- and post-cladistic systematics.

Still, Rabi and Sebök also consider the idea that Doratodon may have been more closely related to members of the Peirosauridae given the absence of sebecids in Cretaceous Africa, or to other crocodyliforms like the Planocraniidae given their geographic range and ziphodont dentition.

[5][10][11] It has been suggested that Doratodon, like other ziphodont Notosuchians, was a terrestrial animal, which makes it an outlier in the Cretaceous crocodyliform fauna of Europe which is otherwise primarily composed of neosuchians, which favor more aquatic lifestyles.

[11] Allodaposuchus was another example of a cosmopolitan crocodyliform with a wide distribution across the European archipelago, being found in Romania, Hungary, Spain and various countries that have not yet yielded Doratodon fossils.

[11][7][8] The classification of Doratodon as a sebecosuchian or at the very least some type of crocodyliform with Gondwanan relations is an important aspect in determining the paleobiogeography of Cretaceous Europe and Africa.

While some groups such as peirosaurids, uruguaysuchids and mahajangasuchids were found around the Mediterranean, sebecosuchians were incredibly rare in this region until the onset of the Cenozoic, when Eremosuchus lived in Algeria while Bergisuchus and Iberosuchus appeared in Europe.

The model further proposes that what followed was a period of isolation for Europe until making contact with Asiamerica during the Barremian to Campanian, allowing for a faunal interchange between the two regions.

The Antlantogea model meanwhile suggests that during the Campanian to Maastrichtian Europe once again connected to Africa, by that point split from the rest of Gondwana, allowing for fauna to move between the continents until the Eocene.

[3] The discovery of Doratodon remains from the Santonian of Hungary indicates that the connection proposed by the Atlantogea model must have begun at the latest during this time period, pushing the onset of the faunal interchange back by several million years.

Discoveries from the Coniacian of Italy and the Cenomanian of France may push the faunal interchange back even further, as does the presence of carcharodontosaurs, spinosaurs and pholidosaurs from the Barremian to Aptian on both continents.

[3][11] Likewise, later European sebecids such as Bergisuchus and Iberosuchus likely arrived through separate events during the Paleogene, as they show no signs of being descendants of Doratodon and instead are considered to be much more derived members of Sebecosuchia.

[3] The same applies to Ogresuchus, which nests deep within Sebecidae and is thought to have migrated to Europe independently during the Cretaceous, although its precise relationships are also uncertain.