Limnarchia means "lake rulers" in Greek, in reference to their aquatic lifestyles and long existence over a span of approximately 200 million years from the Late Carboniferous to the Early Cretaceous.

In phylogenetic terms, Limnarchia is a stem-based taxon including all temnospondyls more closely related to Parotosuchus than to Eryops.

[1] Chinlestegophis, a putative Triassic stereospondyl considered to be related to metoposauroids such as Rileymillerus, has been noted to share many features with caecilians, a living group of legless burrowing amphibians.

The only limnarchian synapomorphy not found in the skull is the elongated shape of the interclavicle bone in the pectoral girdle.

Below is a cladogram from Yates and Warren (2000) showing this phylogeny:[1][3] basal Temnospondyli Euskelia Dvinosauria Archegosauroidea Peltobatrachidae Rhinesuchidae Capitosauria Trematosauria Some more recent phylogenetic analyses such as Ruta et al. (2007) place Dvinosauria outside the Euskelia-Limnarchia split as much more basal temnospondyls.