Fossils have been found in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India, Madagascar, Scotland, Tanzania, the United States, and Zimbabwe.

[2][3] Hyperodapedontinae was erected by Sankar Chatterjee in 1969 as a coordinate name of the family Hyperodapedontidae Lydekker, 1985.

Chatterjee (1969) originally named Hyperodapedontinae to include all Late Triassic rhynchosaurs known at that time, H. gordoni, H. huxleyi and "Scaphonyx" fischeri, and proposed a morphological diagnosis for the clade.

As noted by Langer et al. (2000), using Chatterjee' morphological definition would exclude Teyumbaita and H. huenei from the clade, and thus it would be nested within Hyperodapedon.

To preserve the name, with its original stratigraphical meaning, Langer et al. (2000) redefined Hyperodapedontinae as a stem-based taxon that includes "all rhynchosaurs closer to Hyperodapedon than to "Rhynchosaurus" spenceri (now Fodonyx)".