[1] It possesses many unusual features including a wide, flattened head with narrow jaws and a box-like rib cage surrounded by many rows of bony plates.

A party led by James Kaltenbach (the namesake of Doswellia kaltenbachi) unearthed a large block containing a partial skeleton, including numerous vertebrae, ribs, osteoderms (bony plates), and other bones.

It was found in strata of the Bluewater Creek Formation exposed at Sixmile Canyon in McKinley County, New Mexico.

[1] A 2020 redescription of "Doswellia" sixmilensis determined that its supposed snout fragments represented an entire skull of a related doswelliid.

Paired squamosal bones extend beyond the skull's back margin to form small horn-like projections.

The neck is elongated and partially covered by a fused collection of bony scutes called a nuchal plate.

The ribs in the front part of the torso project horizontally from the spine and then bend at nearly 90-degree angles to give the body of Doswellia a box-like shape.

[5] The pointed teeth, long snout, and upward-pointing eyes of Doswellia are support for the idea that it was an aquatic carnivore.

[7] However, it may not necessarily have been strictly aquatic, as these features are also found in animals such as Parasuchus, a phytosaur which is known to have preyed on terrestrial reptiles such as Malerisaurus.

It is also conceivable that it was capable of limited burrowing either for shelter (as in alligators) or defense, partially burying itself to keep its armor exposed yet protect its soft underside.

[5] The neck of Doswellia was long and flexible, although also heavily armored, so it was likely incapable of bending above the horizontal, instead probably being used more for downwards and lateral (side-to-side) movement.

Although the bizarre downward pointing hip could have given Doswellia an upright posture as in dinosaurs (including the armored ankylosaurs), various other primitive features suggest that it was more likely to have been sprawling or semi-sprawling most of the time.

This means that the bone of the osteoderm formed from a soft layer of periosteal tissue, rather than fibrous tendons or cartilage.

More recently, Dilkes and Sues (2009) proposed a close relationship between Doswellia and the early archosauriform family Proterochampsidae.

Desojo et al. (2011) added the South American archosauriforms Tarjadia and Archeopelta to Doswelliidae, and found support for Dilkes and Sues' classification in their own phylogenetic analysis.