In his work Schroeder also briefly contemplated the possibility that Enaliosuchus was synonymous with the French metriorhynchid Neustosaurus, although he ultimately forewent any definitive conclusions due to the lack of overlapping fossil material.

Oskar Kuhn for instance erroneously claimed that the material was housed in the capital of Berlin in his 1936 paper on the animal, when it had in fact been donated to the Mindener Museum in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Kuhn did however not provide a proper diagnosis, instead simply referring readers to Schroeder's 1923 paper,[5] which only found minor differences that at the time were chalked up to changes that occurred during ontogeny.

This actually represented a violation of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), which states that taxa published after 1930 either require a direct, textual description of the diagnostic features or at least a bibliographic reference to such, rendering it a nomen nudum.

[1][4] Eventually, first hand examination of the fossil material by Sachs et al. showed that both E. macrospondylus and "E. schroederi" were distinct species, separated primarily by the anatomy of the earliest neck vertebrae.

The team further argued for a closer relationship between E. macrospondylus and Neustosaurus gigondarum, with the two animals possibly being congeneric, even though both taxa are for now considered nomina dubia.

Sachs and colleagues argue that this avoids confusion in future studies, as the species name has a long history of use in scientific literature.

The tree recovers the family split into two major groups, Geosaurinae and Metriorhynchinae, with Enalioetes siting in a relatively basal position in the latter.